Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. JK Rowling does. I'm just an avid fan.

Word Count: 2693

Chapter 26: Watch Out!

The next day Cadmus woke up later than usual as the party had exhausted him as well as everyone else. He had slightly overslept but was fortunate enough to be woken up by a house-elf sent by his mother. By the time Cadmus got ready and appeared for breakfast, more than half the school was already present in the Great Hall. The atmosphere hasn't waned at all since yesterday and, everyone was still cheerful as always.

When Cadmus entered the Great Hall, a lot of students stood up and clapped until Cadmus blushed and waved at them. Cadmus could feel numerous pairs of eyes staring at the back of his head as he sat down next to Casper. Nevertheless, he ignored everything and focused on having a conversation with his friends.

Daphne had filled the boys in on the Potters-Bagman-Karkaroff scandal when he was asleep. It turns out that Jacob and Casper had a lot to say about the matter besides cursing them out. Cadmus sat as he listened amusedly at Jacob's rant about how much he wanted to punch their faces. As they were talking, the Weasley twins got up from the Gryffindor Table and casually walked over to the Ravenclaw table where Cadmus was sitting.

"Fred! George! What are you doing here?" Cadmus greeted, waving at the twins.

Fred grinned at Cadmus, "Is it a sin to come over and congratulate our favorite champion on his excellent performance yesterday?"

"Anyways we heard you needed to help with some work. So we did it for you" George said, leaning on his hand that was planted on the table.

"Wasn't that hard really. You just needed a little more practice, little one. We are experts at it," Fred noted with a smirk on his face.

"Exactly" George supported, nudging his twin and pointed at his twin's pocket. Fred took out a folded piece of parchment from that pocket and secretly slipped it into Cadmus's lap. No one noticed the little exchange.

"Farewell, little one. Good luck!" Fred declared merrily. The both of them left promptly after that, bouncing back to their table. Cadmus took the folded parchment and opened it up a little to have a peek inside. He saw two photos tucked neatly inside and a note written in red ink. As soon as he saw those photos, Cadus discreetly put it inside his coat pocket without any questions. After he finishes eating breakfast, Cadmus can get started with his plan.

A young teenager's green eyes gleamed as he feverishly penned a letter. Splotches of ink littered the corners of the parchment but, the boy paid no attention to it. Midway, he paused for a moment before he set his pen down and balled out the draft letter, absentmindedly tossing it at the rubbish bin. The teenager grabbed another piece of paper and restarted over again. After careful writing and editing, the letter was eventually written and neatly folded into an envelope.

The boy stood up and walked over to the window with the envelope where a rather stoic brown barn owl perched upon the window ledge. He expertly tied the envelope around the owl's legs with ease as if he had done this several times before. The barn owl nipped his finger before ruffling its feather and taking off.

The barn owl flapped its wings through the cold November wind as it soared across the Forbidden Forest and towards the North Tower. It circled the North Tower until it found the destination and landed on the window ledge outside the office. It tapped the window with its beak sharply several times to grab the attention of the room's inhabitant.

James Potter was lounging in his armchair tossing an apple up and down lazily. The sharp unexpected sound outside his window scared him. He quickly turned his head around to see a barn owl perched outside his office window. THUNK. The apple he momentarily forgot in the air came back down and hit him squarely on his head with a painful thud.

"Ouch!" James yelped as he made his way over to the window while rubbing his head. What was a barn owl doing outside his window? It wasn't one of the school owls and certainly wasn't one of his friends, so who was sending him a letter? As he raised his arm to open the window, he retracted it and hesitated. He had already faced repercussions for foolishly opening that box sent by an anonymous person so he was more cautious since then.

He opened the window and the barn owl quickly flew in and landed on his desk. James noticed an envelope tied around the owl's leg and set off to retrieve his mail. After he managed to free the envelope from the barn owl's leg, James gave it a small owl treat and it flew back out into the air. Sitting innocently on James' desk was the plain envelope and an ordinary common wax seal.

James pulled out his wand and cast a detection spell for the results to come out negative. No tampering, no curses, not even a magical signature. Well, whatever was inside the envelope couldn't hurt so James shrugged and opened it up. A letter was enclosed. James pulled it out and started to read:

Dear Mr. James Potter,

I know you cheated. Yes, you. I thought that as an adult, you would have a sense of maturity to follow rules but I guess you are still mentally a child. Don't try to act dumb Potter, you bribed Ludo Bagman before the first task to show you the dragons and then helped your son cheat in the Triwizard Tournament. I have evidence so you better heed my words carefully. You either admit upfront to everyone that you cheated and be humble. Or I will have no chance but to expose this scandal to Dumbledore and some of the other neutral organizers as well as the Daily Prophet. Hey, you can also completely disregard this and believe that this is a hoax, whatever you wish. Your choice, your results.

Best wishes,

Anonymous Fire

P.S. Admitting won't kill you; you will just lose some dignity. A wise decision if you ask me.

Reading the letter made James' blood run cold. This was grave news to not only James but Lily and Bagman too. He couldn't rat out Bagman and try to place the blame on him because they had made an oath to each other. Damn politicians being so sneaky. His career was now on the line as well as his reputation. No one would be able to extricate him from this situation. He knew that he was taking risks when he passed that money bag over to Bagman and he had felt that something may happen. Now it's just felt so real.

Wait...maybe this isn't real. Whoever this anonymous person is is just trying to frighten him. The person most likely was bluffing and doesn't have evidence as he/she stated. Yeah, that seems right. There is no way this person can take him down. And if he does go in for the attack, James would not be going down without a fight. He had Albus' support and backup, what could go wrong with that?

James decided not to tell Lily of the letter's contents, instead he locked it away in his drawer and never mentioned anything. James thought that he was so smart doing all these things but, he never knew that the anonymous person was one step ahead of him.

It had been a day since he sent the letter and still, no reply was returned so Cadmus went forward in his plans. Next step: Dupe Lily Potter into thinking that loads of people were already suspecting them.

This part was easy. Cadmus organized a small group of his most trusted classmates, stationed them around the castle at different points, and gave them a few thoroughly constructed lines. The plan worked wonders. Whenever Lily Potter was walking by or approaching Cadmus' helpers, they would talk animatedly about how they suspected the Potters of cheating. What Lily Potter heard throughout the day was some of the following:

"My friend heard that Potter let slip that he was studying about large fire-breathing creatures in the library for weeks before the first task. He must have known beforehand that the first task was dragons."

"Diggory told me that Bagman took Potter aside before the first task for a little talk. Isn't that dodgy? He said that both Krum and Potter didn't seem surprised when they picked out miniature dragon models."

"Did you see how eager Bagman was for Potter's performance? He was literally on the edge of his seat! He didn't even bat an eye for Krum, Diggory, and Flamel!"

"Isn't it just suspicious that a fifth-year student would know to use Conjunctivitis Charm, which is a seventh-year material, to fight off a dragon which coincidentally happened to be useful for the first task?"

"It all fits. Potter was researching dragons, he wasn't surprised, Bagman gave him a private talk and Potter knew to use a specific spell against his dragon."

The plan did a double effect. Those rumors that Cadmus' helpers duped Lily Potter now spread throughout the whole school. Students throughout Hogwarts castle now clustered into small gossip groups and dissected the information. More and more people started to believe in the rumors. To say that Lily Potter was unusually jumpy was an understatement. Lily Potter practically looked terrified throughout the whole day. She threw cautious and nervous glances at those students huddled in close groups and whenever a student stared at her calculatingly, she was out of the proximity in no time.

By evening, Lily decided to confront her husband about all the rumors that were spreading around the school. She was tired of hiding from everyone, even her colleagues who were giving her the wide berth.

"James" Lily shouted, stomping into their office that evening.

James looked up from his staff directory, "Yes, Lily dear?"

"Have you heard these outlandish rumors about us cheating around Hogwarts? We are done for if anyone decides to take these rumors seriously and conducts an investigation!" Lily exclaimed hysterically.

"Lily darling, are you sure the rumors are about us? You know, there's been quite a lot of relationship gossip going around lately about" James said, standing up quickly to soothe his wife.

"Yes, I'm sure, James. All of them suspect us of cheating. I don't care if I get scorned, but what if everyone retaliates against Jamie? He'll suffer" Lily responded frantically as she paced around the room. James rubbed his forehead agitatedly; it was clear he was worked up about the situation as well.

"Lily dear, I will inform Dumbledore right away. He will be able to squash this nonsense. He won't know a thing." Lily sighed and nodded.

"I'm tired of all this madness, James. If only they could find who entered Jamie's name in, we wouldn't be in this mess" Lily admitted clearly in distress. "I had a long day today so, I guess I will retire to bed early. Goodnight." When Lily went to bed, James let out a long sigh of relief. Lily doesn't know about the letter and, he is going to keep it that way. After all, what harm can be done?

Cadmus was frustrated; it seemed like James Potter is not affected at all by the blackmail he sent. So if Potter is not going to take his warning seriously, then he is going to suffer and regret everything later. It was time to tarnish Potter's reputation and everybody else involved.

Cadmus dedicated the whole afternoon and evening, planning out his plan to expose the Potters and Bagman of bribery as well as Karkaroff for cheating and abusing his power. They wouldn't know what hit them. Cadmus wrote several letters, one to the Daily Prophet and the other to Dumbledore. Both mails included two photos of the exchange and a long letter detailing the scandal.

Cadmus suspected that Dumbledore would be enraged upon finding out what the Potters were doing under his nose. He would probably have an aneurysm after.

The third and final letter will be sent to the committee of Triwizard Tournament organizers, the majority of which were neutral and smart enough to know how to act.

Everything is set and finalized. Cadmus would be sending the letters to Dumbledore and the committee first. And then a day later, the Daily Prophet would receive an anonymous letter of evidence on the cheating scandal of the Triwizard Tournament, which will be one of the biggest stories of the year.

Dumbledore's Office

Albus Dumbledore was humming as he read his favorite book The Tales of the Beedle Bard for the 256th time. He quite liked reading books ever since he was little; his mother often crooned nursery songs and read lines from The Wizard and the Hopping Pot with his brother when they were young. But to be honest, he preferred socks over books because one can never have enough socks. Especially now that he was old, he would often misplace them and never find them again. Alas, lots of people still insist on giving him books every Christmas and he would never find the right time to read them.

Albus was in the middle of reading The Fountain of Fair Fortune when a house-elf appeared in his study carrying a large pile of letters.

"Master Albus sir, your letters have arrived," the house-elf squeaked.

Albus set his book down and smiled at the house-elf kindly, "Thank you, Winky. You can set them over here." Winky bowed her head and dumped all the letters on Albus' desk and left. Albus grabbed the pile of letters and sorted through them one by one. Letter from Cornelius. Invitation to the annual Board of Governors meeting. More letters from the Ministry. Letters from concerned parents. Wait...an envelope? He hadn't received one of these in years as not many of his muggle-born students tend to use muggle stationery anymore. He was curious so he opened it. Inside the envelope were two folded up letters and a few photos. Albus pushed his spectacle up his nose and started to read:

The more he read, the more anxious he got. He couldn't believe it; James was stupid enough to bribe Ludo to show him the dragons so that Jamie could cheat and pass the first task. And the fact that he didn't even go under some fake disguise and was caught infuriated Albus even more. Albus was angrier when he looked at the included photos, which showed James and Lily handing a bag of money over to Bagman who was smiling greedily.

He even squashed the rumors of the Potters cheating just a day ago. Now Albus knew that the rumors were true. Oh boy, he was going to be in a lot of trouble with Fudge and the committee. Albus knew that his hands were tied. He knew that he had to try to persuade the committee members that Lily and James acted foolishly and that they should sympathize a little. But Lucius Malfoy would most likely sway the others to force him to fire Lily and James from their jobs.

And then he had the issue of Karkaroff cheating as well. He knew that Igor was a competitive person but he hadn't thought that Igor would go to such extremes to make sure he won. Albus stared blankly at the moving image of his long time friend Igor stalking behind the Potters and Ludo like a ninja. Knowing that it would spark outrage if he didn't, Albus decided to remove Igor from his judge duty before the whole school had an upheaval.

Rubbing his forehead, Albus reminisced the day he offered the defense position to James and how cocky he got. Why did James always have to make things so difficult for him? Perhaps he should have acted sooner and found a more suitable professor to teach defense to the students. As for now, Albus just had to wait for the imminent uproar from the Daily Prophet hoping that it wouldn't cause too many problems.

A/N: I've noticed lately that I've written long authors notes, so I'm trying to keep this short. In the last chapter, we reached an all-time high 5.2K views in a day! It made me super happy that so many of you read my fanfiction. Thank you all for being so supportive and encouraging, I would have never thought that a simple idea could grow into this multi-chaptered fanfiction with over 100,000 views! I would like to take this moment and thank Tigersflame and Qtelatino1 for listing this fanfic under your community. I am honored. If you haven't already, check out the poll I made. The link is in my bio so vote for your favorite chapter so far!

Stay safe and happy,

mintloveme523