This chapter has not been proof-read.
Chapter Fifty-Two
"Yes."
It was stupid, against all logical sense, and yet Harry still found himself trusting the elder man. Maybe it was left over from his first year, maybe it was a completely irrational, or maybe it was the man's soul. There was wear on it, like all souls gained once they reached a certain age, yet there was also a bright purity that radiated from it. Brighter than most of the souls that Harry had seen. Despite everything that told him that Dumbledore should not be trusted, Harry still did. His instincts told him that this man would not make him regret his decision.
'Wow, we're never going to stop being a complete moron are we?' Gabriel sighed though Harry knew that the archangel felt the same way. 'Hope this one doesn't blow up in our faces.'
Sirius nodded, accepting the answer with an ease that Harry was surprised to see. He'd have thought the man would have protested this, put up some sort of fight against telling Albus Dumbledore anything, and yet there was no sign that the animagus was against this.
Sirius smiled at him, obviously predicting Harry's surprise. "Pup, everything that I know about Dumbledore, you know. If you still think he can be trusted then there's something that you're seeing in him that isn't visible to the rest of us. You've proven that you can be trusted to make these calls. When we first met, it took you all of five minutes of knowing me to know that I was telling the truth. Instincts like that? Shouldn't be ignored."
'Huh,' Harry thought. He'd never really thought about it like that. Thinking back, his instincts had told him that something was wrong with the story of Sirius Black. From the moment he'd heard the story, he'd known that there was something missing. Coming face to face with the man, Harry had heard his story and turned on Peter, almost blindly accepting that what Sirius said was true. That wasn't the only instance of something like that either. He always knew who to trust and who to distance himself from. Sirius, Remus, Hermione, the Weasley's as a whole family, he had always just known that he could trust them. Even before he'd gotten his Grace back and had started regaining his memories. How long had it taken him to fully trust Ron? Or to distrust Draco Malfoy? He'd even trusted Hermione, to an extent, when they first met though he hadn't really liked the girl at that point.
'I suppose it could be instincts that we kept even without our Grace and memories,' Gabriel hummed. 'A part of our personality that couldn't really be taken away from us.'
Probably accurate, they'd have to look back on their memories of their previous lives to be certain, yet he had a feeling that it was going to be just one of those things that he was going to have to accept. And while this has been really eye-opening, there was still another problem. Sirius had his answer, they were going to trust the Headmaster with the truth about Harry, all of it.
How, though, were they going to bring up the topic with the man?
As if figuring out how to approach the man wasn't hard enough, Dumbledore became almost impossible to pin down. The man was almost never in his office, or even in the castle itself, whenever Harry was free from classes. If not for the fact that Harry didn't want to bring attention to the fact that he was trying to pin the man down, he probably would have just started skipping classes.
'It would figure that the moment we actually want to talk to the man, he's nowhere to be found!' Gabriel bemoaned in their head. 'Just where exactly is he going all the time?'
'I don't know,' Harry sighed internally. The only thing that they did know was that he wasn't in the castle. The Marauder's map had cleared that up for them whenever they used it to attempt to track the man down.
It was becoming more and more apparent that they were going to have to wait to talk to the man as the Tournament once again became more than just an afterthought. February 24th was the date that was set for the Second Task and it was quickly approaching. And Harry had absolutely no idea what they were going to do it.
Oh, he knew that it was going to be underwater and involved searching for a lost object that he'd miss. He had learned that much from when he had opened the egg. Truthfully, he wouldn't have really needed to trick about holding it underwater since he understood most languages. A perk of being created when Ancient Enochian was the only language in existence. Still, the screeching did threaten to give him a headache, so he had used the underwater trick if only for his aching head and not actual need.
He also knew a lot, and he did mean a lot, of spells that could allow him to locate the object and to breath underwater, for the time that was they were given to find the 'missing' item. Completing the task, in general, wasn't going to be all that hard.
No, the real problem came from the limitations that being a seemingly 'normal' (he snorted at the thought, he'd never been normal, not really) fourteen-year-old student stuck him with. What fourth year could perform the Bubblehead charm? Or transfigure themselves gills? Or knew what gillyweed even was? He doubted a simple summoning charm was going to help him at all in this task and to be frank, Harry was getting more and more annoyed as he tried to come up with something that would be reasonable for him to know and be able to do. Not to mention the fact that his core was still being trained which left out some of the more complex spells.
'Maybe we should try for a second opinion?' Gabriel suggested.
Harry grinned after a moment of mulling that over. He knew exactly who would be able to help him solve this.
"Honestly, Harry," Hermione sighed in exasperation once he shared his concerns with her. "You're overthinking this."
Harry cocked his head to the side, eyebrow raised in question. Hermione groaned as she slowly turned her full attention from her book onto him. "Harry, you are in a dangerous Tournament that could very well cost you your life in the eyes of the teachers and the public. Last year, due to the threat that Dementors posed to you, you learn the Patronus Charm. Most adults can't even produce wisps and though no one really knows what the form yours takes is, your Patronus is corporeal. It is well within reason for you to be able to learn more advanced spells when you take certain facts like that into account."
She was right, Harry realized with a start. He hadn't realized what that would seem like to the rest of the world when he learned the Patronus and when Hermione put it like that, it would be reasonable for Harry to come up with some way to manage the other tasks. Bloody hell, he'd even used the Patronus in the first task.
Grinning, an idea began to form as Harry was able to bring a lot more options back onto the table. The Patronus Charm was a charm. A powerful one but still only a charm so it really wouldn't be out of the realm of possibility to use a bubblehead. He thought over the specifics of the charm before sighing and discarding it. His magic simply wasn't refined enough to do something like that for an hour and there were a few faults that came using the bubblehead. Yes, you could breathe underwater using it but that was all it really did. There really weren't any other perks.
The Bubblehead Charm was in truth, a less powerful version of a mostly unknown charm that had the rather unimaginative name 'Water Bubble Charm'. Like the Bubblehead Charm, the Water Bubble filtered water into oxygen in an enclosed space however instead of that space being around your head, it would cover about two inches around the casters entire body. Due to this, their mobility in the water was increased and the person could swim at much greater speed. Best of all, it could easily be mistaken for a Bubblehead Charm if only seen through the water.
Hermione took one look at his face with a smug smile spread across her own face. Harry could practically hear the 'I told you so' as his friend went back to her book.
Harry pretended not to notice that it was a book on muggle religions.
'I suppose we really should have guessed that she was going to research everything there is to know about us,' Gabriel mused in their head. 'So, how hard do you think it's going to be to cast that spell underwater?'
Harry cursed, ignoring the disapproving glance Hermione sent his way.
Barty Crouch Junior was dead, having committed suicide in his cell during the night. Or that was what the official report would be once this went public.
In truth, Crouch had been found in his cell at the Ministry murdered. Not by a simple Avada Kedavra, that would have altered the Ministry to the performance of an Unforgivable within the holding cells. Instead, Crouch had been killed by a simple cutting curse that had been overpowered and had ripped the man in half. Albus still shuddered at the thought of such brutality on what was, in all likeliness, a comrade. Worse, because of the ineptness of Dolores Umbridge, the man's soul was also lost to them. The only good news of this all was that they knew there wasn't a spy in the upper ranks of the Ministry just yet or else the assassin wouldn't have bothered killing a man that was already, essentially, dead. What worried Albus about the entire affair was the fact that someone had easily slipped past the guard that was supposed to have kept anyone and everyone out of the Ministry holding cells while the investigation was ongoing.
That was not the worst of it. They had been able to interrogate Crouch on his presence in Hogwarts and what he had sought to do by entering Harry into the Tournament before his untimely demise. It seemed that Tom was beginning to make his move towards a comeback, merely delayed three years by his loss of the Stone at Harry's hands. Fudge was desperately trying to keep the entire affair secret from the gossip mills in the Ministry while Amelia Bones was putting together an undercover Auror squad that would attend the Tournament for the next two tasks. Everything that had to do with the Tournament needed to be triple checked daily to make sure that there was not tampering. The Triwizard Cup, most likely the intended portkey, was now under constant guard and security checks performed by Albus himself.
Nothing going in and out of Hogwarts could go unchecked. Not with the safety of every student on the line, not just Harry. Tom was never one to be rational when his initial plans were thwarted. Many a student had ended up in the hospital wing before due to such mishaps, though there was never anything to prove that Tom was involved.
"Albus?" Minvera's voice pulled him away from such thoughts. The Headmaster sighed, knowing already that he was about to add yet another event to his already busy plate. "Preparations for the Second Task are underway."
Ah, yes. Back to the crux of the issue, the Tournament. He gave another weary sigh. "Make sure that every Auror available is supervising the issue. We'll have to coordinate with the Merpeople as well. I'll let Hagrid know to be on site to sooth any difficulties." Maybe once upon a time, he would have been on sight for translation purposes, yet he found himself unable to make time for such a thing. He was already juggling far too much as it was.
"If I may Albus," Minerva said after a pause, "I believe that if it is necessary, I could take over supervision of the Tournament Tasks as they pertain to Hogwarts. Filius and Pomona are more than willing to split up my duties as Deputy Headmistress between them until things calm down. You are no good to anyone over-worked as you are."
There was a time when he would have denied such a thing and continued insisting on managing everything himself. Certainly, he had done so often enough when the war was still in full-swing and Tom was wreaking havoc across Wizarding Britain. No doubt Minerva expected him to do so again and was likely resigned to managing things behind his back in an effort to help as she had done in the past. Yet he was old and getting older. He couldn't do all the things that he had been capable of during the war, much as he hated to admit, and he very well couldn't manage the threat of a new war, a Tournament between schools, and keeping the Ministry from entering a state of panic (for certainly the Minister was on his way to causing one).
"That would be for the best, I believe," Albus answered after a moment of contemplation. "I fear that there are far more important matters at play than this Tournament."
He didn't bother hiding his amusement at her surprise. "Of course," she smiled. "I'll let Filius and Pomona know. I'll also inform Severus that you will be needing him to keep an eye on his old contacts. Oh, don't give me that look, I know you well enough to know that something else much sinister is going on. You've been in and out of the castle more than you have in the last decade and I lived through that war as well, Albus. I went to school with Tom Riddle and I very much know exactly what kind of person he was. It never sat well with me that there was nobody found that night. And then, Barty Crouch Junior of all people, impersonating Alastor? That is very much something that Riddle would have thought up."
There was a reason, Albus reflected, that she was his right hand during the war. As Head Girl was Riddle was a Prefect, she had experience with his schemes that many of the others of the Order did not. She was one of the very few to make the connection between Lord Voldemort and Tom Riddle, though Albus had never asked her how she'd known. He suspected the reason but was still hesitant to ask. It was, after all, a very personal topic.
"There is very little that I can hide from you," Albus smiled despite himself. He was always pleased to be witness to the cunning mind that was so very often dismissed. There was a reason that she was the Deputy Headmistress and it had nothing to do with her house.
It was time, he mused, to step back and let those around him grow. Alberforth has always said he'd had a problem with playing chess with those around him and perhaps allowing Minerva to take on more would be a step to fixing that admittedly accurate character flaw. If he continued pretending that everything was fine, that he could manage all of his duties alone, there would be no way to tell how many ways that he'd inadvertently cause undue strife.
Minerva gave him a small smile which quickly changed into a grimace. Albus didn't have to ask her what the problem was when the sound of a familiar hoot came from behind him. He felt his eye twitch as the spotted owl of the Minster landed on his desk. "I suppose I'll leave you to it, then." The Deputy Headmistress sighed as he retrieved the letter. "Merlin help us if that man is elected for a new term."
"I wonder if Severus could be convinced to make a batch of headache reliever," he muttered as the familiar feeling of pain began to build behind his eyes.
It looked like he was heading back to the Ministry. Again.
Hey look, I'm not dead!
So, I know that I wanted to get more chapters out during Winter Break and before the new semester started but yeah, that obviously didn't happen. I got out less than a week before Christmas and spent the week super busy. And after Christmas? Well, I got a new Switch and Breath of the Wild, so you can probably guess what I was doing instead of writing this chapter.
I was, originally, going to make this a much longer chapter to make up for that but I decided against that when it was obviously taking me a lot longer than expected to get through just this part. For some reason, I was having a lot of trouble with this one. I went through three rewrites before I decided I was going to drive myself insane trying to get it right. I also knew that I wanted this done by this weekend or it was going to be another month, minimum, before I could post it. One of my classes includes a week study abroad in Ireland during the second week of March and I'm going to be doing a lot of homework to make sure that I don't have a pile to come back to as well as preparations for everything I need on the trip itself. The final project is due the Thursday after we get back and I'll be spending nearly all my time on that. It'll likely be the end of March before I can even start writing the next chapter unless I miraculously get some free time before the trip. I rather doubt that though.
Not really an exciting chapter but it does sort of answer the cliffhanger from the previous chapter and I hope it'll tie you over until the next one. I've recently started reworking a few of my plans for this story and I'm excited for the new outcomes of some things. Not going to spoil anything though so you'll have to wait!
As always, feel free to ask any questions you have and I'll answer them the best I can, spoiler free!
~MisteryMaiden~
*NOTE* Somehow, a portion of text was cut out when I posted this chapter. I've added the missing text back in and it should make the whole deal of Barty Crouch much clearer. Sorry for any confusion!
