A/N: So here it is, my new idea. The Goblet's Revenge. This one is already half-written, so people won't have to wait six months between chapter fingers crossed. I hope you enjoy my version of Albus Potter, Rose Weasley, and especially James Potter. I follow some things from whatever JKR has said after the books, but other than that, I'm on my own and enjoying the fact that this is fanfic. Not canon. Speaking of which...

Disclaimer: I don't own it. I'm not making money. I don't want JKR coming after me with her vicious rhetoric. Please don't sue me. I'm a penniless video editor living in a resort community. I can't afford it.

Chapter One: The Goblet of Fire

"D'you see anything?"

Though Albus Potter wasn't the shortest member of the first years—Radcliffe Flitwick, great-nephew of the Charms professor, held that dubious honor—he had to stand on his toes and crane his neck to see past a group of Hufflepuff third years. "Nothing," he told his friends, disgusted. "Don't think anything's happening yet."

Rose Weasley checked her watch and adjusted her scarf. Late September breezes were cool enough to merit warmer cloaks, warning of a cold (and long) winter ahead. "They're going to be late before too much longer."

Beside her, Evan Newcastle shifted from foot to foot. Albus figured he was impatient for the new arrivals only because they were the only things between Evan and a great feast. It had been this way since the Start of the Year feast; while the other first years worried and fretted over whatever lies their older and wiser siblings had told them about the Sorting, Muggle-born Evan Newcastle had daydreamed about all the food magic could produce. He hadn't even been disgruntled at the sight of Sir Nicholas de Mimsy-Porpington's popping up through the treacle tart. In fact, his reasoning had been that perhaps ghosts flavored the food differently.

He'd been disappointed.

Now, he turned to Albus. "You think they're going to put French and Bulgarian food on the tables? I'd like to try that."

"Why?" Rose asked him. "You hardly taste anything since you eat so fast."

Evan shrugged. "Might look better."

"For the three seconds before you inhale it, sure."

Albus ignored his friends—and the other Gryffindor first years beside them, who were all wondering about how the Dumstrang and Beauxbatons students were going to arrive. Instead, he stretched his neck as far as it would go, and shouted. "Something's happening!"

Indeed, Hogwarts students all around them began to move, agitated and excited. The first years all surged forward, though it didn't help them see any better. Only Albus and Winnie Cates, who was taller than the rest of the Gryffindor first years, even Albus, could see anything.

He saw, through a crush of black student robes, something break the surface of the lake. And gaped as that something became a huge ship's mast, boldly red. Surging beneath it came the rest of the ship, a huge vessel of rich wood that gleamed golden in the twilight. Albus could barely make out dots on the ship's deck. Dots that, as the ship came closer, took form as what must be the Durmstrang students—they certainly didn't look French like Albus's aunt.

"It's Durmstrang!" he hissed at his classmates when they poked him. "They've come—on a giant ship, up through the lake!"

"What? How?" Evan, the only Muggle-born among them, tried to push forward and get a better look. "Like a submarine?"

"No, like a…" Albus tried to search his memory, to remember if Aunt Hermione had ever given these ships a specific name.

Rose, however, had managed to nudge a couple of third years aside and get a better look. "It's a pirate's ship!" she told them. "A real one!" She looked very much like she longed to explore it. Albus figured it was only a matter of time until she had dredged up at least three books on ships in the library. And she would probably expect him to read one.

All around them, standing on the lawn, students were chattering about the Durmstrang students, who were now much easier to see. Albus noticed that it was mostly girls speculating—girls above third year.

Before he could comment, one of the third years near him pointed out the sky. "Look at that!"

Immediately, the student body twisted around to look. This time, Albus wasn't the only one of his year privy to the arrival; every student at Hogwarts watched, several mouths agape, as a gigantic, horse-drawn carriage flew at them from the sun. It started as a speck of black in the sky, but as it drew nearer to the school, Albus saw that the horses were easily three times the size of Professor Firenze. Which probably a good thing because it looked like the carriage was big enough to swallow his grandparents' house whole. It landed near Hagrid's cottage with a ground-shaking thump.

"That'd be Beauxbatons," said a new voice, and Albus turned to see that his cousin Victoire had joined the crowd. "Mum told me about that carriage once. It's so big that there's actually a full garden inside, and bidets."

"What's a bidet?" Evan asked.

Rose opened her mouth, probably to give a long spiel, but Albus cut her off by telling him, "Fancy toilet."

"Oh. Okay."

Victoire glanced over the first years, who were all clustered together. "All right, you lot, time to get inside and go to the feast." She made a shooing noise, herding the first years out of the crowd and toward the front doors.

Albus, Rose, and Evan fell in step beside her. "How come you're doing Prefect duties?" Albus asked.

"Because the fifth year Prefect is currently missing." Victoire rolled her eyes; as that same Prefect's older sister, she knew exactly where the missing person was. And she had no desire to go there. "Which means I'm filling in. How's it going? I haven't seen you in awhile."

Albus had been inordinately excited, in the beginning, to finally be attending school with all of his cousins. Maybe James Potter didn't look up to Victoire, but Albus secretly thought she was pretty neat—for a girl. And maybe she would pay more attention to him, now that he was old enough to be considered a Hogwarts student, and a Gryffindor. Maybe she would help him out with Quidditch, even. It hadn't taken him long to see that this hope was futile. Victoire Weasley had to be the busiest Gryffindor on the face of the planet, Albus figured. Between her Head Girl duties and playing Quidditch, Albus only saw his cousin at meal times, and sometimes not even then.

"It's okay," he answered truthfully.

"How's homework going?"

Albus shrugged. Between Rose and Evan, who was quite brilliant when he wanted to be, he never had to worry that he'd have a wrong answer, as long as he debated his homework with his friends. James, who lived for scaring his siblings, had made Hogwarts sound much harder than it seemed. "That's okay, too."

"I got a letter from Gran today," Victoire said conversationally. "You won't believe what color Uncle George managed to turn the Burrow last week."

"Puce?"

"Chartreuse?"

"Lavender?"

Victoire laughed. "Green."

Albus wrinkled his nose. For Uncle George, that sounded tame.

"No," Victoire went on. "I mean everything was green. Including Errol the Second, Granda—who found it funny—and Gran—who did not."

Albus spent a very entertaining moment imagining his diminutive grandmother bright green—and hopping mad. It made him grin as he entered the Great Hall with his friends and classmates. He was still grinning after Victoire had shooed them away so that she could sit with her own friends, the number of which seemed to be great indeed.

Evan sat, a bit put out that there was yet to be food in the serving dishes. "So, this is the Tri-Wizard Tournament kick-off."

"Looks like."

"Wish there was food."

Rose absently patted him on the shoulder.

For the past fifteen years, the wizard world had lived at the beck and call of the Goblet of Fire. Albus knew this only because he distantly remembered his father talking about it to his mother after dinner one night. He'd been so fascinated by the idea of a goblet full of fire that he'd tried to make one himself—and had been grounded to his room without his toy broomstick for over a week. Now that he was old enough to know better, he'd written his father at the beginning of the year, and had received a surprisingly in-depth answer.

Fifteen years before, the Goblet of Fire, retired since Harry Potter's own days at Hogwarts, had sprang to life. Unable to do anything else, the schools had carefully gone through with the Tri-Wizard Tournament, this time at Beauxbatons. With no casualties this time, everybody had been happy. And they'd been just as happy to let the goblet keep resting. Nobody was particularly pleased when the goblet had woken again just after Albus's fourth birthday, but the Tournament had taken place at Durmstrang.

Even while the Hogwarts Express had been en route to Hogsmeade, the goblet had fired up for a third time.

It was Hogwarts' turn.

Now, Albus turned as the doors to the Great Hall opened wide. Like the rest of the school, he rose to his feet.

First came the wizards and witches of Durmstrang, in their furred hats and swirling robes. They looked, to Albus's young eyes, a bit fierce as they stomped into the Great Hall, their faces impassible.

Beside him, he heard Rose gasp. "That's Viktor Krum!"

Albus twisted. Sure enough, following the Durmstrang students came the very imposing, impossible-to-out fly Viktor Krum himself. He'd retired from Quidditch before Albus's fifth birthday, but Albus still heard his uncles—save Uncle Ron—waxing on about the greatest Seeker of all time. Save Harry Potter, of course.

"Reckon you should let your dad know he's here?" he asked Rose without taking his eyes off of the great Quidditch player. "Bet he'll turn red."

Rose grinned in a way that reminded Albus of their Uncle George.

"Who's Viktor Krum?" Evan asked—just as the doors opened a second time to admit the Beauxbatons students. They were, as Albus had suspected from the stories his dad had told, mostly female. He heard several of the older Gryffindor girls whispering about their robes, but to Albus, they looked like plain old robes. Unlike the Durmstrang students, who strutted in their group, these French students seemed to be gathered around a set of twins. A gloriously blonde girl and her equally-handsome brother strode down the aisle between the Hufflepuff and Gryffindor tables, their chins so high that Albus wondered if they were trying to balance something on them.

"That's Giselle and Germain Delstanche," one fifth year whispered to her friends. "The international models—I hear Gladrags've been trying to get them to model, but Germain said no. Look at them, they're both so gorgeous."

Albus thought they looked a bit pinched-faced, but he knew better than to say anything. He understood without anybody telling him that one of these two was the Beauxbatons hopeful for champion. Just like there were three tall Durmstrang students that seemed to stand out. Albus eyed them, wondering if Victoire, who'd already professed her interest in being Hogwarts champion, could take them on. She might be a girl, he reminded himself, but he'd seen her and Uncle Harry dueling at the last big family picnic. And Victoire had held her own—for a little while, at least.

"Food!" Evan cried suddenly, yanking Albus from his reverie. Even as the redhead turned, his best friend was almost buried in a dish of some kind of stew Albus didn't recognize. It certainly smelled delicious, though.

There were, after all, some perks to international relations.

After the food had been eaten, and several speeches made, introducing the judges, and a couple of Aurors Albus distantly knew from visiting his father at work, the food was finally cleared away and dessert laid out. Headmaster Quinlan made a speech welcoming everybody and waved for Mr. Filch—did the man never retire?—to bring out an old chest.

"What's that?" Evan whispered to his friends.

"The goblet, I expect."

Rose leaned forward in her seat to get a better look. "I'd have thought it would be bigger."

Albus shrugged.

Filch worked the chest open, no small feat with his spindly arms, and pulled something from within its depths. Reverently, he passed it over to Headmaster Quinlan, who placed it on a small dais in front of the teachers' table.

"Any witch or wizard of age may enter their name in this goblet after this Feast. We shall draw names to choose one champion from each school on Friday, giving you a week to decide." Quinlan looked around the hall, seeming to meet everybody's eyes as he gave the warning. "Do not undertake this task lightly—or as a joke. The contract is binding. If you are selected, you will have to compete."

He paused, mostly for effect. "But consider this: anybody competing in the Tournament is exempt from end of the year exams."

There was a small cheer among the seventh years.

Quinlan gestured for Madame Olympe and Headmaster Krum to join him. "Shall we?"

When the three of them lit the goblet together, a small sun in the center of the Great Hall, Albus felt a shiver—and wondered why.

Over the next week, Albus watched students enter their names into the cup—and watched other students try and fail. Those under seventeen just couldn't seem to go near the goblet. They would walk purposely and find their feet leading them somewhere they didn't want to go, like straight into a table or a wall.

Other students learned quickly from their example.

Albus watched the Durmstrang students enter their names over dinner the night after the welcoming feast. One by one, the wizards and witches strode toward the goblet and firmly dropped their slivers of parchment into the goblet, jumping back to avoid the little licks of flame. It was almost anticlimactic, but Albus enjoyed. The last wizard to go was the tallest, a black-haired wizard named Mikhail Korvachev. When he went back to his group at the Slytherin table, the entire lot cheered.

Albus secretly bet he was going to win Durmstrang champion.

The French students didn't cheer each other on. Instead, each time a student put his or her name in the goblet, they were glared at until they returned to the Ravenclaw table. The only ones who received cheers were Giselle and Germain.

Life didn't change much for the first years with the Durmstrang students and Beauxbatons students running around. Any students from the other schools were all in classes with the seventh years, so none of Albus' classes differed from before. He still did fairly well in Potions with Professor Hopewell teaching, and he still couldn't transfigure a thing nearly as well as Evan or Rose. Chatter ran to speculation and side-bets over which students would be champion, but that was about it.

Still, he was as excited as the rest when he traveled with the first years down to the feast where the champions would be picked. He'd hollered and whooped with the rest of the Gryffindor table when Victoire Weasley and her roommate Allison Baybeck put their names in. For posterity's sake, he'd booed the Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw entries, and had sneered at the Slytherins. It had been great fun.

"You know," Evan philosophized while they took their seats, "I think Hogwarts is my version of heaven. Maybe I've died and don't know it."

"Endless classes and coursework is your idea of heaven?" Albus asked. He spotted his brother James come in with a group of the second years and waved. James didn't wave back.

"'Course not." Evan stuffed a huge forkful in and talked around it. "All this food? All the time? Just…just sitting there. Heaven."

At his side, Rose laughed. "Of course food would be your idea of heaven. Speaking of which, Al, can you pass the asparagus?"

"Don't know why you like this stuff," Albus told her as he handed over the dish. "Tastes foul."

"Says the boy who willingly eats beets."

Evan rolled his eyes as the cousins started bickering, but, as he was stuffing his face, seemed to content to ignore them. His head jerked up as the goblet, at the front of the room, spit out a long tongue of flame. "Hey—something's happening!"

Immediately, silence fell over the Great Hall. Albus could practically hear all the seventeen-year-olds holding their breath.

Headmaster Quinlan stood up, chuckling. "Guess the goblet's impatient to begin, eh?" Creakily, he made his way down to the dais where the goblet sat. He rubbed his hands together. "Let's see who our lucky victims—I'm sorry, I mean champions—"

A few nervous laughs tittered through the hall.

"—Are. Dear me!"

The goblet spit another spurt of flame, nearly singeing the headmaster's eyebrows off, but he moved back with more finesse than usual. One hand reached up and snatched the slip of paper from the air. "All champions will report immediately to the room right off the Great Hall. And, representing Durmstrang—"

Albus leaned forward.

"Mikhail Korvachev!"

"Should've put money on that," Evan muttered as the Slytherin table went crazy.

The goblet launched another slip of paper. "From Beauxbatons—Giselle Delstanche!"

"Wow, this is a bit predictable," Rose observed as Giselle rose to her classmates' cheers, shot a superior smirk at her brother, and sauntered toward the door Mikhail had used. "Bet you ten Sickles it picks golden girl Victoire for Hogwarts."

"No bet."

"Drat. I could use ten Sickles."

When the goblet launched its third and final slip, Albus and the Gryffindor table held their breaths.

They needn't have bothered.

"And from Hogwarts—Victoire Weasley!"

Dishes flew everywhere as the Gryffindor table leapt to its feat, shouting and cheering. Victoire was nearly swallowed by congratulations; she laughed as she broke free and waved to the school on her way to follow Giselle and Mikhail. Taunts flew from the Gryffindors to the Slytherins, to the Hufflepuffs. Everybody at the tables alternately sneered or cheered.

Therefore, only a few saw the goblet burp out fourth and fifth papers in quick succession. But everybody somehow heard the intake of breath from McGonagall, who'd snatched the papers from the air. And the hall went absolutely silent.

McGonagall stared down at the scraps of parchment in her fingers. A line appeared between her eyebrows, a line that Albus had already learned did not bode well for anything Gryffindor. McGonagall was, in a word, displeased.

Finally, she cleared her throat. "James Potter."

Immediately, every whisper in the hall died. Not a sound could be heard; Albus was sure he'd stopped breathing, was positive the air had just collected in his lungs and burned with jealousy there. No fair. James was going to be champion?!

"And."

The hall seemed to draw its breath as one.

"Albus Potter."

Stunned, Albus lifted his eyes for the first time, looked down the table toward the second years, toward a set of eyes that matched his own.

"Mum," James breathed, staring back, "is going to murder us."