The Imposter Complex, Chapter Twelve: There's No Sport Like Blood Sport.

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Thud

A spear of ice impacted the bullseye hard enough to make it reverberate.

'Cor, nice shot Harry!' Sirius exclaimed.

I looked over my copy of Hawking's "God Created The Integers" with an appraising eye. The pilus addendum to the glacius spell was a useful bit of combat magic for the young or inexperienced; it was a deadly weapon but did not require much energy to cast, and the wand movements were damn-near point-and-shoot. The boy had good aim, he'd winged the innermost ring on his third time casting the spell.

We were in Dartmoor, at the vast camping ground that had been organised for the 1994 Quidditch World Cup. Garrow and Belinda Avery had dragged me along, the former having apparently conspired with Black to have adjacent campsites. The former had done the same with the rest of our mutual friends back in 42, though then I had agreed primarily to get out of staying at the Orphanage. Also in attendance with Black's contingent was a man I recognised from Pettigrew's memories as Remus Lupin. A werewolf.

'Grey! You're up.' Garrow barked.

The shooting range had been my idea. I had never cared much for Quidditch; in my opinion there's no point to any competitive sport where you don't get to kill something or blow it up. I was bored to tears by the whole affair, and thus the need to blow off steam.

I stood, setting aside my book and cracking my neck from side to side. My wand found my hand - my Yew wand. I had been careful to keep the Holly one stowed around the Potter boy, even though he had since replaced it. He did not recognise me as his attacker at all of course, I had been in the guise of an old woman at the time, but there was no sense in risking him recognising the wand itself. Indeed, the boy apparently liked me a great deal (Probably because I'd gotten his godfather his freedom) and kept trying to get on my good side, which was a bit annoying.

I was about to cast, when out of the corner of my eye, I recognised a face in the crowd of Quidditch enthusiasts milling around the campground. I absently flicked off a piercing curse, which went way off target and barely winged the edge of the bullseye.

Sirius cackled loudly at the pitiful effort. 'What happened Tom, spot one of those Bulgarian Veela?'

'Something like that. I'll be right back.' I said, and winked mischievously at the group before sauntering away, laughter and jeering following me. I noticed the Weasley clan approaching our camp as I went, fortuitous timing on my part.

I had, unfortunately, not spied one of the Bulgarian mascots. The individual I was pursuing was much less pretty.

I seized Peter Hein, the man who had once spared us a good deal of trouble in the House of the Rising Sun, by the shoulder and spun him around.

'Riddle old boy, how ruddy excellent to see you!' As before, his mannerisms and accent were British, almost cartoonishly so. But beneath them, for the first time, I detected something… else. They were an affectation.

I looked around wildly, making sure nobody had heard the name. 'Who the fuck are you, Hein? How do you know that name? Why are you here?' I demanded, grasping him roughly by his collar.

Hein chuckled, like an adult humouring a toddler, and removed my hand from his suit jacket, easily but gently overpowering me. He smoothed the collar where I had rumpled it.

'Tom, you must calm down! All things in their proper time! I told you who I am, I'm a traveller. I'm here to work. Or rather, I will be working, in about…' he pulled out a golden pocket watch. 'By jove, would you look at the time! I'm terribly sorry old chap, but I must be trotting on, things to do, people to… see. Toodle-oo!'

With that, he turned on his heel and strutted away. I went to chase him, shouting for him to wait, but my view of him was obscured by a passing couple for the briefest of moments, and he was gone. Without even the lightest of pops to signify apparition. For fuck's sake.

His accent had slipped slightly, on that first sentence after I grabbed his collar. An ordinary person probably wouldn't have noticed, but I, who have spent so much time taking the knowledge of languages wholesale from others, did. Just a hint of something Germanic. Dutch, if I had to guess. But what the bloody hell does that mean?

:—:

It was late, after the match. It had ultimately turned out to be much more entertaining than expected - a bit of Veela magic did wonders for turning men violent against one another, and play had gotten nasty in the late-game.

We were sat around a campfire of brilliant cyan flame, and the others were still jabbering excitedly about the match, while I was focusing on cooking the fourth lot of sausages for the night. You could still hear the Bulgarians celebrating - they'd won by a hair's breadth, 170 to 160. Even with my limited grasp of the sport, that Krum kid was impressive on a broom. Sirius had cracked out the firewhisky shortly after the match was finished, and we'd worked our way through a fair few bottles already. Potter was off with the Weasleys, letting Black get a little rowdier than he may have otherwise been.

As the flames began to wear down to blue coals, I noticed something of a shift in the sounds echoing across the campgrounds. They sounded less like exultations and fireworks and more like… screams and explosions.

I stood at the same time as Lupin did, his expression somewhat more alert than the others.

'Sirius!' He said warningly. 'There's trouble.'

Sirius staggered up, clearly not having noticed, his eyes glazed. 'Aaaaah, there's always trouble when the Marauders are around!' He crowed, waving a bottle around and dancing a little jig. Then there was an explosion, as a tent a few rows down from ours suddenly went up in flames. That sobered Black up quick.

Lit by the fires, we could see them, a crowd of men and women in black robes and silver masks. 'Death Eaters!' Sirius hissed, his expression murderous. Behind him and Lupin, Garrow yanked back the sleeve of his left arm to check; it was as blank as he'd told me it had been on November 1st 1981. Whatever this was, Lord Voldemort was not involved.

My wand found my hand once more - there would be no more wandless ridiculousness for me this time. Whomever these people were, whomever they were perhaps pretending to be, a chunk of them were headed this way, and my blood sung for the impending conflict. Already I could make out the flashes and bangs of fights breaking out between the raiders and their quarry.

Sirius and Lupin shouted something about making sure the Potter boy was alright, and ran off. I licked my lips and began to prowl toward the chaos, when Garrow caught my arm.

'No killing!' He hissed to me, as Belinda drew her own wand, looking a little unsteady on her feet; she was much smaller than we were and the alcohol had hit hard.

I looked at him incredulously. 'The bloody hell are you talking about, Gary?'

'If they're the real deal, the old guard, some of them were friends once. Please.'

I wrested my arm from his grasp. 'I'll see what I can do,' I muttered, and with a twisting of space I was gone.

I reappeared half a dozen rows over, and immediately laid eyes on a pair of the raiders ransacking an overturned tent. The first fell without even realising I was there, stunned and bound in barbed wire. His mate whipped around, firing off some curse or another, it didn't even come close to hitting me. With a flurry of motion from my wand, the earth beneath him turned to water, then back into dirt when he fell in, sealing him up to his neck.

I hissed frustration through my teeth. Of course I had the bad luck to end up with the chaff of the bunch, that's just typi-

I shunted myself backwards several feet just before a piercer would have cored my skull. I whipped around to my new challenger, who blocked my Electrocution hex effortlessly and followed up with a very nasty bludgeoning-cleaving curse known as the Foe Hammer. No shield I could cast would block it, so instead in an instant I tore a column of stone up from the ground between us, which exploded violently at the impact.

Continuing with the earth theme, I dragged my left foot backwards along the ground whilst twisting my wand and incanting in old Korean. The ground shifted as if I was yanking on a long carpet, tripping the man, who stumbled right into my banisher. He slammed into a huge long Irish flag, which promptly coiled itself around him at my command like a serpent, leaving him hanging upside down from the flagpole.

A little better, but still pathetically weak. My blood howled for a greater challenge. Off in the distance, the main group had started to itself break up into big chunks, looting and pillaging. High above them, the muggle family that ran the campground were being levitated by somebody in the crowd, contorting and pirouetting in the air like some kind of macabre dance.

I twisted through space once more, and was nastily reminded of the very strenuous warnings the books I'd used to learn apparition had given against doing so in a battlefield; I had appeared right in the path of somebody's spell. It struck me in my chest, and for the briefest moment I lost all sense of the world around me as I flew through the air.

I landed hard on a timber picnic table, the wind completely blown out of me. My chest seared from the ugly burn that now marred my left breast; I had been hit by a concussive siege hex of some kind. Thankfully not one made to use against humans, or I would likely have been obliterated. I cursed myself for my foolishness, and rolled to my feet, dismissing my non-magical injuries with a flick of my wand. That burn was definitely going to scar though.

The man who cast it, another of the raiders, was running at me, wand raised. My fury surged. He was halfway through an incantation, but I was faster. He screamed as I banished him whilst summoning his right forearm bones; they tore their way out of his arm entirely, and I had to cancel the summon before I got hit in the face with a wet ulna.

The wizard continued to wail in agony as he slid back across suddenly muddy ground; and that wailing attracted more raiders. How many drunken ex-Death Eaters were there in this godsforsaken place? The first went down just as easily as all of his mates, but the second surprised me, palming my petrification curse and dispelling the chain that followed it. He struck back with a spell I didn't recognise, but which shattered my shield like a piece of glass.

I rolled out of the way of the bludgeoner that followed, and forced another pillar of stone up through the earth; this time a slender one to catch him in his chin. The man was almost thrown into a full backflip by the impact, and landed in a heap. Flicking a second petrifier at him, I was about to again bemoan my foes, when he leapt up and countered it again.

I grinned as we began exchanging spells in earnest. Finally someone who doesn't go down from the first nick. I tried for that earth-to-water trick again, but he froze the water before he could fall in. It cost him though, I caught him in the shin with a fatigue-plague hex, which would no doubt be creeping up his body already. He retaliated with what I believe was a Romani acute-misfortune curse, but it sputtered against my shields; now that I'd learned when to dodge that shield-buster of his, he was struggling to get anything past.

I caught him in the face with a bludgeoner that he'd simply been too slow to catch, and he fell to the ground, his mask skittering away. I froze, I knew that face.

'A-Abe?' I stuttered before I could stop myself, and the man looked back at me incredulously. No, even with a broken nose spurting blood down to obscure his chin, this clearly wasn't Abraxas. But I did recognise him from the waif's memories. Abe's son, Lucius.

Before either of us could say anything, a great emerald light lit the entire campground. We both turned to look. Up, floating high above the surrounding forest, was a huge glowing green skull, composed of a thousand witchlights. As we watched, the skull opened its mouth, and a great serpent wended its way out, like some monstrous tongue. Cool trick.

I turned back to Lucius, and he to me, looking horrorstruck. With a twisting motion, he was gone. Just in time too, as someone had finally remembered to call for backup; Aurors had started cracking in all across the campsite. Already many of the raiders were making good their escape before anti-teleportation wards could be raised. Pity, I had hoped for it to continue a little longer.

:—:

The campsite was a mess, little fires still crackling here and there all over the place even an hour after the fact. A solid portion of the tents were just straight up obliterated. My own allotment of land was, by good fortune, untouched, and it was there that I sat calmly, examining my Yew wand. Since recovering it from the Pettigrew cottage, I had noticed a slight difference in its personality compared to the Holly wand. Whilst each was perfectly matched with me in a way no other wand ever could be - unless perhaps if a third brother wand was made - they were not identical in nature.

My Yew wand, I felt, seemed to be made to sow destruction. It yearned for it almost, and darker shades of magic flowed from it with barely the slightest of exertions. My Holly wand, on the other hand, was its equal opposite. Defensive magic sung from it almost before I had even called for it. Transfigurations too, were near effortless from it, whilst the Yew seemed to prefer elemental magics.

Not that either ever balked at all when used outside those fields of course, but there was a definite tinge to both of them.

I was interrupted from my musings by the return of Sirius and the Potter boy. They had clearly been through the wars, Sirius still had blood staining his face from a hastily-healed gash on his forehead, and Potter had his arm in a conjured sling. I - having seen no reason to showcase mine own errors - had taken the time to put my appearance back together, though beneath my silk shirt my newest scar still seared. I would need to use some healing ointments on it when I got home.

Sirius rolled his eyes when he laid eyes on me. 'Of course bloody Grey gets through without a scratch on him.' He joked to Potter, who half-grinned through his obvious pain.

'Why, how did you fare, Sirius?' I enquired innocently. Potter snorted.

'Dunno what you're laughing at, fuzzball,' said Sirius, looking mildly affronted, ruffling Potter's perpetually untidy hair. 'You're the one who's going to be on regen potions for a week and a half because you thought you'd try to duel a full-grown wizard!'

Potter had the decency to look sheepish. 'I did beat him though.'

'Yeah, because he tripped over his own robes when he saw the Dark Mark!'

'Still counts.'

I elected to interrupt before they dissolved into bickering entirely. 'The Dark Mark, that's that big glowing skull thing, yeah?' I pointed to where it still burned in the sky.

Sirius nodded sagely. 'Yeah, the Death Eaters used to cast it whenever they attacked a place. It rips apart temporary apparition wards like wet paper. Apparently it hasn't been cast since the end of the war, so it shook people up pretty bad to see it again,' He looked curiously at me. 'How come you don't know about it?'

'I was in Hong Kong most of my life, remember?' I lied. 'Most people there hadn't even heard of the bloke. Where's Remus?'

'Still assisting with clean-up. There's a couple real nasty-looking curses that got flung about that they want an expert to examine before they start messing with them. Garrow and Belinda?'

I chucked a thumb over my shoulder to our tent. 'Sleeping it off. How many of the drunks did they catch?'

Sirius eyed his own tent longingly. 'Only four or five, plus two killed by some Israeli Auror on holiday, and none of them seemed to have been ringleaders. Blimey I'm tired, I think we're gonna turn in as well.'

I watched them go, and then looked back to the Dark Mark in the sky. It taunted me, a stark reminder of my other self's descent into megalomania. With a great echoing cry of 'Finite!' from over a dozen wizards, it finally dissolved, leaving me enshrouded in darkness once more.

:—:

The World Cup debacle was all anyone would talk about for the next week. Alif Dervish had demanded a blow-by-blow recount of affairs when I next visited his shop, and I'd managed to get myself several drinks bought for me at the Three Broomsticks by providing the same.

It had started off amusing, but was getting old very quickly. Even when Garrow and myself travelled to Carcassone for Gerard Delacour's birthday in late August, the first question that the customs bloke asked was 'Were you fellows at the World Cup?'.

Delacour's estate was breathtaking. It looked like something out of a Disney movie (Something Sirius had simply insisted on introducing me to after I'd failed to catch a cultural reference of his). Vineyards as far as the eye could see, surrounds a classic chateau of sandstone brown and roofs shingled with a material of such a deep blue it was almost purple.

As we approached, we were soon among a steady trickle of guests cracking in along the main path. At the entrance to the chateau, we spotted Gerard standing to greet his friends, accompanied by a woman who could only be his wife. Gerard was a somewhat short man, and somewhat overweight (moreso than when I had seen him last, at any rate), but his wife was the opposite, almost matching my own slender two metre frame. I double checked my mental defences as I approached; Garrow had warned me that she was a Veela and so it would not do to embarrass myself.

Gerard greeted us jovially, taking my one hand in both of his to shake; you'd never have guessed I'd once had to chop one of them off. I had slipped an illusion over the Gaunt ring for the night, making it look like a simple golden band. Given how he'd reacted to the mark of Peverell last time, I didn't exactly fancy waving it around at his birthday.

Fortunately, I had had the forethought to explain to him several months ago that I had been under "illusory magic" when we first met, so he was not taken aback by my drastically different appearance.

His wife - Apolline - was as engaging as she was beautiful, and she seemed to appreciate being able to have a conversation with a wizard who wasn't just ogling her. Even with her bringing her aura down to its lowest level, there were still several men struggling not to stare. Even Garrow was glancing out of the corner of his eye when he thought nobody was looking. Neither she nor Gerard seemed offended by it though; I suppose they were used to such things.

I walked with Apolline through to their grandiose parlour, which was slowly filling up. Gerard did most of his business working with Gringotts, so there were a surprising number of Goblins around for a Wizarding affair (and by that, I mean two or three). The Delacours had apparently hired human servants for the party, which couldn't have come cheap, and I nabbed an apéritif from a passing tray.

Gerard's work took him all over the world, and it showed; his friends were as eclectic a bunch as any I'd seen. Garrow had engaged with an Austrian wizard whom I'd seen visiting Alfhearth in in the past - the Avery family's chief business was in importing luxury goods, and the Austrian magical community was famous for their yeti-hide rugs and coats

I spent the next few hours mingling with the crowd. This kind of event was where I tended to flourish; I was very good at quick first impressions. I had been fortunate enough to find myself conferring with a very snarky Norwegian witch from the Scandinavian Ministry; she opined to me at length in Norsk about how British magical authorities were making her life difficult. They were trying to fast-track the import of a Norwegian Ridgeback for some ungodly reason. She'd been stonewalling them hard; the Ridgeback was highly endangered and she wasn't going to risk a nesting female for any amount of gold. 'They cannot expect we shall hop to just because they asked!' She exclaimed, downing her seventh champagne. It would be useful to have contacts in Norway, I would soon have to visit there on my latest adventure on the trail of Lord Voldemort.

Eventually I found myself out on a balcony in the cool summer breeze. South France was lovely this time of year. Almost as lovely as the Veela witch down in the garden, who I was watching get steadily more and more furious with the fellow teen she was speaking to. Ah, young love. From what little I could pick up from their shouting, the lad had been caught in a broom closet with one of the witch's cousins.

Garrow spoke from behind me. 'There you are Tom, I've been looking all over-'

'Not now, Gary!' I declared loudly, waving my arm at him. 'This is very entertaining, I think she'd about to turn him into a tangerine!'

I looked back. She had stopped yelling and was looking directly at me. Oops. She drew her wand, and for a moment I thought she meant to try and take potshots at me. But instead she sucker-punched her boyfriend, who had turned to see what she was looking at. In an instant, he was transformed into a small citrus fruit, which fell to the ground. I roared with laughter, the sounds of my approval echoing across the vineyard. She stalked off angrily, not looking back.

My fun ended, I turned to back to Garrow. 'What can I do for you, Gary?'

'Oh you're done ogling the half-Veela now?'

I made a face. 'You realise that all Veela are full Veela, right? They're a race entirely comprised of women, how else could they possibly propagate?'

'I always heard that they just slept with muggle men so their magic doesn't have to compete with ours?'

'Nah, I think that's just some of that really extreme blood propaganda stuff, you know, the kind of shit Nott's dad used to be super into. Just went mainstream for some reason.'

'Interesting,' He didn't sound terribly interested, but points for trying. Avery had always been the least caring of our group about blood status. He would never go so far as to refer to Muggles as people, but muggleborns he couldn't really give a shit about. 'I was hoping I could take advantage of some of that, ah, Grey charm, there's this Sri-Lankan chap over here who's being thoroughly unreasonable about his prices for Ceylon Ebony, I mean really it'd almost be cheaper just going through the Muggle black market…'

:—:

Garrow and Mohan Dissanayake shook hands firmly. It had taken them bloody ages to come to an agreement, even with me mediating. Apparently the muggle government of Sri-Lanka had banned the sale of the endangered timber entirely earlier this year, and the magical government of India was heavily restricting it also. Garrow's old supply had dried up, and so his quiet desperation for a restored supply line had honestly been more of an issue than Mohan's reluctance to lower his price.

I saw the young lad that the Veela girl had thoroughly dumped reenter back into the parlour, still orange in some places. He stumbled over to the fireplace and left by floo, but not before giving everyone a good laugh. I spied the girl standing next to Gerard. Ah, she must be that Fleur he'd told me so much about. She caught my gaze and gave me a filthy look, I toasted her with a smirk, but did nothing more. I looked away, but out of the corner of my eye, I saw her pointing me out to her father with an irritated expression, and heard his booming laugh shortly after.

Dinner was, predictably, magnificent. If there's one thing that the French knew how to do, it was cook. I had wound up sitting next to an older American wizard, who had wasted little time in regaling me with the surprisingly long tale of the one time when he went windsailing using a god-damn Thunderbird. Somehow, he managed to make that story boring. In the midst of it all, Gerard got up and made a lovely speech about how happy he was for everyone to be there, it was quite sweet really.

I had gifted Gerard the Scarab I had once offered up to Sibrandr Oryx; as I had described it then, it was a priceless treasure, but one that I myself had little use for. Gerard's unknowing assistance in assuring my immortality was infinitely more valuable to me.

We left Carcassonne late, promising Gerard and Apolline that we would visit more in future.

I awoke in my home the next day, for once not suffering one of the usual nightmares, and so it was with a light heart that I made my way downstairs to prepare my breakfast.

As I munched on some eggs and toast, the morning delivery of the Daily Prophet arrived. I glanced at the headline mid-bite, and choked on my toast.

MINISTRY HEAD MURDERED!

Barty Crouch found dead in own home, House Elf to blame?

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A/N: Apologies that I took a little longer with this chapter than my usual, I took a couple days off writing due to a hectic schedule.

I actually had this entire chapter written out without the Morsmordre before I remembered that Barty Crouch Jr had done that before Voldemort and co rocked up at the Crouch residence. Had to go back and edit :)