STRANGE DAYS
Chapter 249
See first chapter for disclaimers.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: Thanks to Storyseeker for beta-reading this. As usual, if you have any comments or preferences, please don't be shy. RandR. Slight spoilers for the manga.
BTVS & The Reincarnated Prince Wants to Slack off
And now…
Harry Potter and…?
The Power Voldemort Knows Not (Take 2)
Harry scowled as his relatives walked away laughing. He dismissed them quickly from his thoughts, though. He had a problem to solve. He had to find platform 9¾. Asking seemed a stupid approach, at least unless he could find one of the supposed witches or wizards. He still had a little trouble accepting that even with the evidence he'd seen.
Focusing on the area between platforms 9 and 10, he let the information flow over him. Two men walking side-by-side, chatting and smiling, passed the area and Harry quickly shut down the flow of information, not wanting to know the details of what the couple were going to be doing soon.
He refocused and saw a man putting something in his pocket. The pale ring of skin on his finger was all the clue he needed. The smiling woman, who was over a decade younger, in the too tight outfit was almost unnecessary. He moved on. There was a pickpocket working the busy crowd that Harry took the opportunity to 'accidentally' trip in front of one of the station's posted police officers.
It was about that time that he heard the word 'muggles.' He turned toward the woman's shrill voice, and saw a family of redheads making their way toward the post between the platforms, near where he was standing. Their course was clear, so he moved towards the column and pushed through, as that was obviously their intention.
He found himself on a very dated looking train platform. He would guess that the steam engine, well-maintained though it was, had to be over 100 years old. The correct number came to him along with some details of its design. He shrugged that off as unimportant.
He picked an entrance and got on, dragging his trunk behind him. It took him a moment to find an empty car, as it had been close to 11:00 when he reached the station. He found one toward the back and settled in.
The door opened a few minutes later, and a redhead his own age came in. The boy looked around and focused on Harry. Part of the same big family he'd seen outside the platform. They were rather poor, and the boy wore hand-me-downs. Youngest son. Hygiene was questionable at best.
"Hi. All the other compartments are full. Can I sit here?"
Lie. There are other open cars. He specifically came looking for me. Harry nodded and gestured to the seat opposite him. He said nothing, wanting to see what the boy would say next. He introduced himself as Ron Weasley, and was amazed to be meeting the Harry Potter. It was only partly an act. Harry could tell, but Ron was clearly excited to be there.
A question or two about his family combined with what he knew about Hogwarts suggested that his family had put him up to seeking out Harry, but he didn't know why. Ron had simply concluded that his parents thought Harry could use a friend, and perhaps, they could use the connection to a famous and wealthy wizard. He was still a little shocked over the amount of gold he'd had in his Gringotts' vault.
Harry was still unclear on why he was famous. Hagrid's tale had answered a few questions, but it still made no sense that people would think a baby could defeat a powerful adult wizard. At the moment, though, that wasn't the issue. Ron's 'plan' was.
After a little consideration, he decided to let it slide. The plan, as far as Ron knew it, wasn't all that sinister. Accepting the offer of friendship at face value seemed best at the moment, even if his weird gift kept pulling more and often unwanted information out of thin air.
He'd gotten used to it, but still wasn't sure where it came from. All he knew was that the odd magic, he supposed there really was no other word for it, had emerged about a year before, after a very frustrating day with his relatives. They had punished him for the fourth time that week for something they weren't being specific about.
They told him he was being punished for being a freak and causing freakishness. He told them repeatedly that he didn't know what they were talking about, but they never believed him. This had happened from time to time over the years, but as he got older, it seemed to happen more frequently. The only pattern he had noticed was that it seemed to happen after one of the Dursleys had some bit of bad luck, and it didn't matter whether Harry was present or not.
That day, shortly before his tenth birthday, their behavior simply started making sense. They punished him when something went wrong in their lives, especially when something unexplainable happened. He tried to understand these events, but his relatives were less than cooperative, always blaming him and believing he had deliberately caused whatever problem they were having, whether he knew about it or not. It was hard to refute or even understand an accusation that wasn't shared with him.
It was frustrating, but his new magic did help. He was able to respond to and manage their behavior more easily. He got better at 'reading the room' and deflecting their temper tantrums from himself. It didn't always work, though, especially when he, somehow, was the cause. His cousin's birthday outing to the zoo was one such event.
His magic told him that the snake was indeed responding to him, but he didn't see how that could be. When the glass had vanished, dumping Dudley into the enclosure, the headache that hit him was a monster. Nothing about that incident made sense. It should have been physically impossible.
His head had hurt so much that he used the M word to his uncle without thinking about it. That made matters worse, of course. The M word was strictly forbidden in the Dursley home, and he knew it.
Fortunately, the Dursley's had limits on physical abuse. Vernon would handle him roughly at times, and deny him food for as long as two days, but the man never actually beat him. Dudley was another matter, but the fat slug was basically a coward, and he wouldn't deliberately go too far. Harry's new magic made his cousin easier to deal with, as a few well-chosen observations about how he and his friends spent their time, and Dudley would avoid him like the plague.
The letters and the owls had given him a headache. Animals delivering mail made no logical sense. He also didn't know why they were delivering multiple copies of the same letter. At least, not until he saw his uncle's reaction to the flood and realized that he had missed the first letter's delivery. His uncle had burnt it.
Hagrid's arrival to explain the situation had opened his eyes to a great many things. Unfortunately, he was left with far more questions than answers, and the headache that resulted from trying to fill in the blanks with too little information had nearly left him bedridden.
Still, he had adapted. Accepting that magic was real, despite his relatives' repeated claims to the contrary, and that he himself was magical, ended the worst of the headaches. He just got on with learning the rules of the new world he found himself a part of.
He had read through a couple of the textbooks already, his magic giving him insights not explicitly mentioned in the text, as well as some unwanted information about the author of the history text's opinions on the muggles. 'Hogwarts: A History' had answered far more of Harry's questions than the author had likely intended, and some of it worried Harry.
After a couple of hours spent talking with Ron, he begged off to read some more of his text books. Ron took out one of his own, somewhat reluctantly, but Harry didn't even need to glance up from the charms text to know the other wasn't reading. Instead, he kept trying to distract Harry. This is going to be a long trip.
OOOOOOOOOO
Snape glared down at him. He's not seeing me. Harry realized. He's seeing my father. Dad did something to him. Something that humiliated him or even put his life in danger.
"Mr. Potter. Our new celebrity." He sneered. "Tell me, Mr. Potter, where would you look if I told you to bring me a bezoar?"
"Your potions' cabinet." Harry answered promptly. Before Snape could finish turning purple, he pushed on. "If someone had been poisoned, and you wanted the remedy to most common poisons, I assume you'd want the closest one, not for me to run down to Hogsmeade and gut some of Aberforth Dumbledore's little friends looking for a fresh one."
Snape stared at him. He opened his mouth, but then closed it. "An acceptable answer."
The potions master looked a little disconcerted. Clearly, he hadn't expected such a thorough answer. At least, it stopped the man's mean-spirited 'quiz.' The other students were staring at him, but they'd already been doing that.
Snape, Harry realized, would be a problem. It was going to take a lot of work to get the man to see him as anything other than James Potter reborn. It wasn't the time or place to confront him about his issues, though, so deflecting was the best course. There was a sadness in the man as well, but his magic didn't have enough clues to work with.
OOOOOOOOOO
"A harp?" Ron asked.
"Hagrid did say that music put Fluffy right to sleep." Harry nodded. "Come on. Let's hurry. That spell won't last much longer."
His friends had stopped questioning how he knew the things he did, and merely accepted that he was almost always right. They opened the trapdoor and dropped through, landing in a nest of vines that began to snake around them.
Harry cast a quick spell to emulate sunlight, and the vines went slack, allowing them to fall through. The three moved on to a chamber full of keys with wings. A broom appeared to be the only means of reaching the correct one.
"That one." Harry pointed. "The one with the broken wing." He frowned. "Too obvious. Something bad'll happen if we try it that way."
"Like what?" Hermione asked.
"Let's not find out." Harry went to the door and tried the standard unlocking charm to no avail. He didn't know any others, but he knew that most wizards had a blind spot. He reached into the pocket of his robes and brought out two slender pieces of metal.
"What are those?" Ron asked as Harry began gently working the lock, letting his magic guide him.
"Lock picks. Ordinary, non-magical lockpicks." The lock clicked and he opened the door. "Sometimes wizards can be really stupid." He led them into a room with a giant chessboard.
"How are you going to get across this?" Ron asked. He sounded a bit resentful, given the way Harry had gotten them this far on his own.
"I'm not." Harry answered. "You are."
"But you've won every chess game we played."
"Because you're an open book, Ron. I could tell your strategy by watching your face, the way your hands twitch towards certain pieces." He pointed at the statues across the board, waiting with swords at the ready. "This is different. There are no clues about what those things'll do, and even I need something to work with." He put his hand on Ron's shoulder. "Truth is, mate, you're a much better chess player than me."
Ron looked surprised, and it was clear that he didn't entirely understand Harry's reasoning, but he knew his friend was counting on him. He positioned them on the board and started to play.
It took almost an hour of careful play, but the enemy queen fell. So, unfortunately, had Ron. Harry told Hermione to stay with him, and walked into the next chamber. The only thing in the room was a table holding three potions and a riddle that Harry barely glanced at before choosing the correct potion and proceeding.
"Hello, Professor Quirrell."
OOOOOOOOOO
"What happened with Professor Quirrell is a complete secret. So, naturally, the whole school knows." Harry listened to the headmaster's explanations, which while true left out a lot of things Harry had managed to deduce for himself. It was fair, he supposed. He had left a few things out of his report to the headmaster as well. After weighing the pros and cons, he did something that he rarely did with Dumbledore or Snape.
He met the old man's eyes unflinchingly and asked a question. The boy caught the flash of confusion as he encountered Harry's occlumency shields before it settled into the kindly grandfather mask the headmaster always wore. The meeting wasn't going as the old man hoped. Harry could read that plain enough, but he needed more information. Voldemort, what a ridiculous name, had not exactly been a wealth of information. No body language to read, and his voice was just too odd to offer any clues. Harry took it for granted that most of what the man(?) had said was a lie.
"If would really be easier if you just told me what you know about Voldemort and his followers and let me help rather than keep me in the dark. I know I'll be a target for Voldemort, and ignorance is not going to keep me safe."
"Harry, Hogwarts is the safest place in the wizarding world. You don't need to worry." Though he'd seen that answer coming, Harry still gaped at the headmaster's words.
"Wow. You said that with a straight face. I'm impressed. We both know that isn't true. Voldemort was here, in the castle for months and you didn't notice. You had a Cerberus behind a door that a first year could open and practically dared the students to go poking their noses in there. Your traps protecting the stone were a joke. Was the stone ever actually here?" His strange magic informed him there was a high probability that the stone had never been at Hogwarts.
The old man didn't speak. He didn't need to. Rather than call him out on it, Harry tried for a conciliatory tone.
"I know you want to protect me, but given that I have enemies, or at least their children, in the school, that don't have to sneak in, I'm not safe. I'm not safe at my relative's home either." He watched the man's expression carefully and then frowned, forgetting his plan to try to reason with the old man. "You know that already. You know they're abusive magic haters."
"They are your family, Harry. I-"
"They don't agree, and neither do I. I've never thought of that place as home." He noted the pained look on the old man's face and the slight tensing of his hands in his lap, and decided to push a bit more. "I want out of there, and if I knew what was going on, I might be able to help end the threat faster. You know I can help. That's the whole reason I'm so 'protected' isn't it?"
He saw the answer even as Dumbledore tried for a neutral, patient expression.
"I thought so."
Dumbledore frowned. "You are not a legilimens." There was no doubt in his tone.
"No. I'm not. I'm also not your enemy, so please trust me. I need to do something proactive in this, and I can help." He watched Dumbledore's face carefully. Not answering the man's unspoken question was a risk, but Dumbledore had a lot of secrets, and Harry wasn't sure the old man had his best interests at heart. "You're not as sure of your plan as you'd like to be. Too many variables? Yeah, that's part of it, anyway. The rest…"
"Enough, Harry." The headmaster stood. "I will consider your offer." He was being genuine, which surprised Harry. "For now, you'd best get some rest. You've classes tomorrow, and the leaving feast is coming up."
OOOOOOOOOO
The Dursley family had been less horrible over the summer. Hagrid's suggestion had been a good one, and likely would have been enough to keep them off his back, but he had also gotten practice at manipulation and done a little research on his relatives. He made it plain to them that there would be muggle consequences if they kept up their behavior. Reputation was everything to Vernon and Petunia Dursley. Having the authorities intervene to remove Harry, very publicly with accompanying newspaper articles, was something they'd do anything to avoid. Harry convinced them that he had learned enough about how wizards did things that he could ensure Dumbledore wouldn't protect them. The old wizard wouldn't be able to hush things up and simply bring him back to their home.
The story was half bluff, but he managed to sell it, playing on their fear of public humiliation. That actually proved more effective than the threat that he'd practice his spells on them. They had spent the summer largely ignoring him and doing their own chores for once. It left him time to spend at the library and a few other areas, gathering information on a variety of subjects. The more he knew, the less frequent the headaches. It made sense, as his magic didn't have to work as hard to pull information from nothing. Consequently, he practically devoured the textbooks on magic and even the extra reading on theory. The summer reading from Hogwarts was done within a couple of weeks, leaving him free to do other things. Visits to the library and a couple of different ministry offices were on his list of things to do.
OOOOOOOOOO
"It's a basilisk." Harry told them. The staff stared.
"Mr. Potter, what are you doing here?" Snape sneered at him.
"Slytherin's monster is a basilisk." He moved to stand at the end of the staff table. "Really, it's obvious. It was Slytherin's pet a thousand years ago. Voldemort let it out when he was at school, and now, he's got an agent at the school doing it for him."
"Don't be absurd." Snape scoffed.
Harry rolled his eyes. "I hope you're not going to say Hogwarts is the safest place in the wizarding world, and that could never happen?"
"Please explain your reasoning, Harry." Dumbledore interrupted the developing argument.
"Spiders have been fleeing the castle in droves. You've got three victims so far; Filch's cat, Sir Nicholas, and Justin. The cat was found near a puddle of water, which suggests she only saw its reflection. Nick can't die again, and Justin saw the thing through the ghost, sparing him the full power of it. I checked the references in the library. This is all consistent with a basilisk."
The headmaster nodded. "That is sound reasoning."
"It was also the basilisk that killed Myrtle; the girl Hagrid's pet took the blame for. Since wizards don't have anything like forensic science, which would have confirmed her cause of death, the spider took the blame, even though a specimen that young couldn't have killed her." The headmaster looked thoughtful. "I talked to Myrtle. She said right before she died, she saw a pair of big yellow eyes. Not something that a spider that you can hold in one hand would have."
He looked at Snape. He'd honestly tried with the man, but he was absurdly stubborn in his view of Harry. "As often happens in such matters, proximity and convenience was enough. Why think when you have a suspect no one will defend close at hand?"
"Harry, that is uncalled for." Dumbledore frowned.
"Doesn't mean it's not true." Harry said. "Besides, it only comes out when called, and no one will be calling it again." He withdrew a small book from his pocket and tossed it on the table. "This is the diary of Tom Marvolo Riddle, otherwise known as Voldemort."
The gathered staff stared at it. "How is that relevant?" McGonagall asked.
"I don't know the technical term, but I think part of him is sealed in the diary. You can actually have a conversation with it if you want, though I suspect prolonged exposure would be bad. I'm pretty sure that's how it snared Ginny Weasley. She's been letting the basilisk out while she slept and not remembering any of it."
"How?" Dumbledore asked, leaving the question open-ended. He eyed the diary as if it were a snake that might bite him. He obviously knew what it was.
"I talk to people, and I listen. I talked to Moaning Myrtle. I talked to Hagrid. I talked to Draco Malfoy. I even talked to the spider. People tell me things without meaning to. You know that, Headmaster." He met the old man's eyes again, knowing that his efforts at occlumency might not keep him out, but they would, at the very least, confuse the hell out of him.
"I will confirm your claims." Dumbledore sighed at last, picking up the diary.
OOOOOOOOOO
"Mr. Weasley? Why would I go looking for someone who wants to kill me?" It wasn't an idle question. Harry really did want to know the answer. The Weasley family patriarch nodded in relief and patted Harry's shoulder.
"Good to know you're being sensible."
Harry sighed. "I really do want to know what you're talking about." He stepped in front of Arthur Weasley before he could walk away and watched him closely. "Why would I want to go after Sirius Black?"
Arthur Weasley had heard some odd things about Harry. Ron said he was very smart, almost too good at reading people. Dumbledore wasn't so sure, but that was all the headmaster had let slip. Too many questions.
"Black went to school with my parents." He frowned. "They were close friends." Arthur tried to bluster his way past the boy, but Harry stepped in front of him again, nodding at each denial and evasion. "The common belief is that he betrayed them. What came out at the trial?"
"Trial?" Arthur stopped, trying to remember any specifics he could, but drew a blank. "I'm not sure."
"I think that would have been big news." He frowned again. "He didn't get a trial, did he? He was sent to prison because everyone 'knew' what he had done, so why bother getting the facts?" Harry shook his head in exasperation. Wizards disgusted him at times.
As he still had a couple of days, he made a trip to the ministry and the offices of the Daily Prophet, where he spent several hours doing research. This included looking at court records and trying to access his parents' will. He was able to confirm that his godfather had never gotten a trial, and that his parents' will had been sealed on orders of the head of the Wizengamot; Dumbledore.
His next outing took him to Gringotts. His parents' wills were on file there and the wizards couldn't touch it. His account manager met him in a private office. Seeing that goblins took the phrase 'time is money' quite literally, he skipped formalities and got to the point.
"I want to see my parents' will and all of my account statements going back to the time of their deaths."
OOOOOOOOOO
Harry left Gringotts with a new objective. There weren't many ministry officials that would be interested in reopening an old case, based on what he knew of wizard thinking, and Dumbledore's reputation was impeccable. He had a vague plan, but it would have to wait until additional research could be done into wizarding law. It would also be helpful if he could find Sirius Black.
OOOOOOOOOO
"Petrificus Totalus." The intruder in their dorm room fell over with a thud. "Well, finally." Harry huffed as he climbed out of bed. "I've been trying to find you to talk for a while now." He rolled the petrified wizard onto his back.
Sirius stared up at him. Ron stared as well. Having been rudely awakened by Sirius pulling open his bed curtains. "Harry? Wha's goin' on?" He asked, rubbing sleep from his eyes.
"Don't worry, Ron. Nothing to worry about. Black won't be causing any problems."
"BLACK?!"
Ron's shout woke the other boys in the room. They gathered round to look, and one started for the door to get McGonagall.
"Wait!" Harry called. "I want to question him myself before we get anyone else involved." They stared at him. "Come on, guys. You know I can get more out of him." Sirius was looking distinctly worried, but he also looked resigned.
It took a little convincing, but Harry gained a few minutes. "Okay, Black. Why were you after Ron? I know you didn't make a mistake about whose bed it was."
The man blinked in surprise and confusion, the only thing he could do. Then, his eyes narrowed and started darting about.
"Not Ron? Who then?"
Black glanced at him sharply, and Harry sighed. "Don't do anything stupid." He released the paralysis and kept his wand on the man.
"The rat! It's an Animagus!" He twisted around, pointing at Scabbers who squeaked in terror and jumped off the bed, making a run for it. Several wands came to bear, and two different stunners struck the panicked rodent, much to Ron's loud complaint.
"Hang on, Ron." Harry tried to calm him. "He took a big risk breaking in here just to get at Scabbers. Let's see what he does with it." He turned to Black. "You know the spell to force him back to human form?" Harry asked. Black nodded. "We're all watching you closely."
Black was given his wand, and he cast a spell. Scabbers immediately began to swell and change. Soon, a portly, scruffy looking man was lying on the floor, fortunately unconscious.
"Say hello to Peter Petigrew. Your parents' secret keeper."
"I thought you were their secret keeper." Seamus blurted out. "Everyone knows that."
"I was too obvious a choice, so we made a last-minute change. No one would suspect Peter, and anyone looking to get at Lily and James would come after me."
"No one knew that Peter was already a marked death eater." Harry said, rolling up the man's sleeve to display the dark mark. "Now, we can clear your name and prove what really happened." He faced Sirius directly. "You'll get the trial you should have gotten all those years ago."
OOOOOOOOOO
"Astonishing." Dumbledore shook his head. "You've accomplished something truly amazing, Harry."
"Yes. Now, it's time for you to tell me everything you know and suspect about Tom Riddle. Everything."
"Harry." the headmaster began, trying to be patient with the boy.
"Don't tell me you're trying to 'preserve my childhood.' That was shot down when you dumped me with the magic haters. I'll speak plainly, headmaster. You will tell me what you know and include me in your planning or I'll let Sirius and everyone else know that you knew exactly who the secret keeper was and the reason why you didn't press for a trial for my godfather. As head of the Wizengamot, that was something you could have easily done."
"You think I deliberately left him in prison?" He seemed genuinely shocked at the idea. That actually surprised Harry, but he pressed on.
"So that I could be raised in an environment that would leave me beaten down and grateful to my 'rescuer.' You hoped to engender loyalty by introducing me to the wizarding world and giving me hope for a bright future I'd fight for, entirely dependent on you. I know you encouraged Molly Weasley to have Ron approach me that first day on the train."
"Harry…"
"That's abuse of power. Subversion of justice. A few other things. Even if you didn't meticulously plan all of that out, I'm willing to bet the idea will appeal to your political rivals."
He let the old man frown over that for a second. As he was about to speak, Harry pushed on. "You can include me in your plans to deal with Voldemort, all of them, and we can fight him together, or you can spend all your energy trying to disprove the theory I just spun before a ministry that's turned on you. What do you say?"
"Blackmail, Harry? Really?" The old man looked profoundly disappointed. "That's a dark path."
"It's the only path I see to getting things done. You're way too stubborn to simply reason with."
Dumbledore allowed a slight smile. "You may have a point, but that doesn't make this any more acceptable." He sighed regretfully. "You do have a point about your childhood, though. I did the best I could."
"That's why you should accept my help." Harry smirked.
"Though being nice, I see." Dumbledore observed, reluctantly amused that he'd walked into that.
OOOOOOOOOO
Dumbledore caught the fourth piece of paper to be spat from the goblet of fire, looking startled.
"Here we go," Harry sighed.
His friends turned to look at him, Ron somewhat indignantly. "You put your name in? Why didn't you tell me?"
Instead of answering his friend, or following Dumbledore's instructions, he stood up. Stepping to the bench and then to the table, he cast a silent Lumos to ensure he had everyone's attention.
"Harry? What-?"
"I, Harry James Potter, do swear on my magic that I did not put my name in the goblet or in any way encourage or compel anyone to do it for me. So mote it be. So mote it be. So mote it be."
There was muffled laughter from the Slytherin table. "Scarhead's gonna lose his magic!" Malfoy. No surprise there.
When magic confirmed that the oath had been accepted, Harry cast another Lumos, proving he still had his magic. He looked around the room. "Any questions?"
For a moment, the only answer was a laugh from the head table, where Moody was practically cackling over his actions. "Boy is more cunning than most of the Slytherins I know."
The phrasing bothered Harry a bit, but he didn't dispute a compliment or a statement of fact. He hopped off the table and headed for the room where the other champions waited.
OOOOOOOOOO
"Just let it be. You were going to anyway."
"Meaning?" the headmaster asked, drawing curious looks from his counterparts. The headmaster had come to the room alone to inform the champions and the other headmasters of the decision reached.
"It would be easy enough to get out of it, but you want to know who put my name in the goblet and why. Easiest way to do that is to force me to stay in the tournament as bait and let them play their hand. Doesn't mean you'd be able to stop whatever they have planned, but you'd likely be the second one to know when they got away with whatever it is."
"The second?" Karkaroff asked. He was somewhat impressed with the boy's pragmatism.
"I'm betting I'll be the first to know." Harry answered.
OOOOOOOOOO
"This should work." Harry nodded. "Good idea."
"I have them occasionally." Dumbledore demurred. "We need to find the real Alistor, though. I hope he's still alive. We've been friends a very long time." He raised a hand. "Don't start. This impostor is an excellent actor and we both have very busy schedules. I didn't realize that he was actively avoiding me until recently."
"I didn't work it out either," Harry admitted. "I'd never met the man before, and even I need something to work with. As much as it may seem otherwise, I can't just pull information out of the air." He shook his head. "There had to be someone actively guiding the plan, though, and he is the only new arrival. The conversation I asked you to have with him confirmed it. Don't worry about Moody, too much. Polyjuice doesn't work if the hair sample comes off a corpse. He must be keeping the real Moody alive and close by."
Dumbledore nodded. "Are you ready for the third task, then?"
"Everything's ready."
OOOOOOOOOO
Harry frowned at the Triwizard cup. "This has to be it."
"What?" Cedric asked.
"The cup is likely a portkey, as we've been herded to this point."
"Herded?" Cedric had heard rumors about Harry, and seen him do some incredible things during the tournament. He wasn't sure about the cup being a portkey, but Harry had no reason to lie if he wanted to claim sole victory. He could have just left Cedric trapped in the maze.
"Someone cast the imperius on Viktor. No way he'd torture someone of his own free will. I also saw signs that some of the traps had been dealt with before I reached them."
"So, what are you going to do? If it is a trap…"
"Not much choice but to spring it. Don't worry. I've made plans." He walked forward, grabbed the cup, and vanished.
OOOOOOOOOO
Graveyard. Little Hagleton. Probably the Riddle house. Harry mused. Which should mean someone would be coming for him. He crouched behind the nearest tombstone and donned his invisibility cloak. He'd taken to carrying it in a bag of holding he'd acquired. The bag held a few other surprises as well.
He moved stealthily around the gravestones until he spotted a robed figure approaching. "Where is he, Wormtail?" a raspy voice hissed. On closer examination, the robed figure was carrying a bundle about the size of a baby. The voice had come from the bundle.
Casting a silent Expeliarmus, Harry sent the man flying in one direction and his wand in another. He quickly closed on the downed wizard and added a stunner. He checked the bundle and a twitch of the blanket was enough to alert him. He ducked just in time to avoid a bolt of green light. Another expelliarmus sent the wand flying leaving the creature helpless. Well, that was much easier than I thought it would be. All that planning and….
"Hello, Tom." He shook his head in mock despair after using his wand to flick open the coverings to ensure there were no more surprises. He rather wished he hadn't. "How the mighty have... shrunk."