Dumbledore stood at the front of the Great Hall, the Goblet of Fire burning behind him, illuminating the walls of the darkened room with a warm flickering light. All the students of Hogwarts and the Seventh Year students of Durmstrang and Beauxbatons sat in the hall facing him. Behind him were the teachers of Hogwarts and the Headmasters of Durmstrang and Beuxbatons and the official from the Ministry of Magic, Barty Crouch Sr. as well as Lily Potter. She had been helping Barty recently as he planned to retire soon.
He had given his speech, and sadly it had to be somewhat understandable and not the gibberish he preferred, as Crouch would not appreciate it. With a grand gesture, the fire in the goblet changed color becoming much colder in color than before; it then spat out a small piece of paper. Dumbledore quickly grabbed it out of the sky before it could float to the ground, moving much quicker than people would expect of a man his age.
Opening the paper, Dumbledore had to suppress a smile due to the barely eligible handwriting on the paper. In moments like these, he saw the students in front of him as the children they were—despite all the dangers they had faced from the Chamber opening, and Pettigrew escaping Azkaban—they were still just children.
"Victor Krum!" Dumbledore shouted, causing all the students of all three houses to cheer, with many congratulating him as he walked up to Barty and Lily, who led him off to where he was supposed to wait for the other two champions.
Another piece of paper burst from the flames, but with many of the students still excited from Victor's entrance, he did not read it immediately but instead waiting for everyone to quiet down again. After only a moment, everyone had quieted down, though he could tell that Severus was glaring behind him, so that may have sped things along.
"Fleur Delacour!" Dumbledore shouted, causing everyone to cheer again, though the male students seemed much louder this time around, causing him to chuckle, which luckily no one heard.
Again Crouch and Lily led the student to where they would wait for the final student to be selected, and then they would have the rules explained to them while everyone else was sent to bed. Dumbledore knew that most would not go to bed, but it was easier to only have your own house congratulate you then the whole school.
And just as he finished his thought, the final piece of paper burst from the flames, but a small gust of wind seemed to have caught it, causing it to blow to the side, making it, so he had to actually run to grab it, causing many of the students to snicker, and if anyone were to notice the blowing motion on his lips, no one said anything. He always enjoyed seeing his students happy.
When Dumbledore finally caught the piece of paper, he turned sharply and walked back to the front of the room, where he had stood before, a serious look back on his face, except for the twinkle in his eyes that had always done an excellent job at getting him caught.
"Cedric Diggory!" Dumbledore finally shouted, causing the students to once again cheer; many of the teachers seemed happy about this as well. He knew that even though Hogwarts was united this year that if either Slytherin or Gryffindor won, the other house would still have a rivalry.
He was happy to see everyone congratulating the Hufflepuff boy as he made his way over to Crouch and Lily, who once again led him off to join the other two; he watched them go, with Lily returning moments later. He smiled at his once student, and she gave a strained smile in return, one that did not reach her eyes.
"The Twi-Wizard Tournament is for us to show unity, not with just our houses and schools, but as Wizarding kind as a whole. It is to let us learn and see each other when we would not normally see each other; it lets us compete together in friendly competition to build bonds of friendship, where we would have once been strangers." Dumbledore began his speech, quieting the students like a switch being flicked.
"But let us not forget those who lost their lives so that we may sit here in harmony, the wars that have been raged, and the pain that has been brought by those who wished to destroy our unity, let us remember them as we enjoy this year, and thank them for their sacrifice." Dumbledore quieted down for a moment, looking at Lily once again, and giving her an assuring nod before addressing the students once again.
"Have a good night all of you; I imagine that you have much to celebrate, especially the Hufflepuffs, but do not overwhelm your Champions and-
Gasps interrupted his speech as the fire in the goblet burst out a fourth paper, which flew high up into the sky before it slowly lowered. Dumbledore watched it with interest during its decent till it was where he could comfortably grab it without reaching out his arms.
Opening the paper slowly, Dumbledore froze when he read the name. The longer he looked at the name without calling someone out, the louder the murmurs grew from the students and teachers. He turned to Lily, knowing the hurt he was about to inflict on her when he read the name; he tried to convey how sorry he was through his eyes, but she didn't seem to notice it.
Dumbledore turned to the students, feeling like his age had finally caught up to him as he looked down at the paper once more before he shouted the name.
"Hagara Potter." His voice was much more hollowed when he yelled out this name, and the name itself silenced the crowd, the name of a long-dead child did that to people. The only sound was the soft sounds of a grieving mother.
No one said anything; Dumbledore didn't know what to say. Should he yell out into the crowed demanding who put this name in the goblet? He knew he had pranksters in these walls, but he also knew that none were so insensitive.
The goblet suddenly rose into an inferno, causing many to gasp in fright; Dumbledore had to back away from the fire because even though he knew it was not hot, the mind still tells you when to avoid stuff, and you will do it.
The goblet slugged a large chunk of its flames onto the ground. The flame rose high, almost touching the Great Hall ceiling before it slowly started to head down to the ground again; as it reached Dumbledore's shoulder height, someone began to become visible in the flames.
Long, jagged, ebony hair poured down the armored shoulders of the being, the shoulders led down to tight armor, partly covered by a black and red robe, which showed off the woman's body in it. Part of the leg armor was then hidden by a skirt that was split down the middle to show armored legs and tall metal boots. The face of the woman was pale, not unnaturally pale, but pale nonetheless.
As the fire subsided and finally disappeared, the woman's eyes flew open, revealing yellow eyes that almost seemed to glow in the darkness of the room; she grabbed a rod from her belt, and a sword of red light burst from the rod. Then unceremoniously, she fell forward, crashing to the floor completely unconscious.
No one said a word.
"All right, all of y'all get to bed, go on, get!" Moody suddenly yelled, taking control of the situation; no one wanted to disobey the Veteran, but they were a lot slower to follow his orders than they usually were. But in only a few minutes, the Great Hall was cleared of every student.
The teachers then went into a panic with them all speaking at once, trying to figure out what had just happened, but with no answers, the mass of voices just got more jumbled the longer it went on. Though Madam Pomfrey wasted no time and went straight to the woman unconscious on the floor, Dumbledore could only assume she was worried since she had fallen face-first onto the stone floor.
Lily also ran over with Pomfrey, and that is when the missing piece of the puzzle in Dumbledore's mind was finally placed into the puzzle. Hagara Potter; that name had summoned the girl, and there was only one reason it would. This woman was the lost child of the Potters; the one thought to be destroyed with Voldemort all those years ago.
Dumbledore turned to look at the teachers, wondering if he should help them calm down or help Lily and Pomfrey, but upon seeing Moody and McGonagall working on getting the teachers to calm down again, he decided to help Lily and Pomfrey.
"We need to get her to the medical wing." Pomfrey said as she used her wand to lift the woman up, so she would be more easily moved.
"What is wrong with her?" Dumbledore asked, concerned for the woman's health.
"She broke her nose from that fall, and it looks like she will develop a nasty bruise on her head as well; it is a simple fix, but I also want to check her over for any other injures." Madam Pomfrey stated as she began hurrying down the hall to get to the medical wing, the unconscious woman floating behind her.
The whole time Lily just stared at the woman, seemingly wholly mesmerized with her features. Lily seemed to also believe that the only reason this woman would be sent here was if the woman was her own child. But upon looking at the woman closer, Dumbledore had to be a little bit skeptical, since the woman seemed to be a young adult, to late teen; certainly not a fourteen-year-old like Hagara would be if she had not disappeared with Voldemort's destruction.
But magic was strange, so he did not completely banish the idea that this woman was somehow Hagara Potter, but there was more skepticism in his mind about it.
They quickly arrived at the medical wing, which had been much emptier this year thanks to there not being any Quidditch practice. Pomfrey set down the woman on the bed closest to the door they had entered from; she then went over to the other end of the room where the medical supplies were kept and began going through it to find what she needed.
Dumbledore turned away from Pomfrey and walked over to the bed that the woman was laying on and stood on Lily's side, who still continued to stare down at the woman.
"Could she be, could she be Hagara? Could she be my baby?" Lily said softly, her voice breaking at the end.
"I do not know Lily, I will make sure that Pomfrey tests her blood to figure out her name, though, I promise you." Dumbledore swore, trying to comfort her, and give her hope, without giving her any false hope by guaranteeing that this woman was, in fact, her long lost child.
"She looks so much like James, her hair is dark, and a mess, her face has the same angles as James's face, but much more feminine, she has the same eyebrows as James as well." Lily said, chuckling at the end as she looked at the woman's eyebrows, which did, in fact, look remarkably similar to James Potter's eyebrows.
Pomfrey returned to them, stopping them from continuing any form of conversation that could have been started from Lily's comments. Pomfrey poured a bit of salve around the woman's broken nose and began rubbing it across the skin around the nose, being careful not to actually touch the nose. After a moment, she pulled away and then cast a spell causing the salve to sink into the woman's skin; and already, the nose started to straighten itself out again.
She then waved her wand over the woman's head, casting a spell, and the purpling and swelling of the bruise on her face began to fade. Pomfrey sighed, happy to have her work finished; she then lifted the woman up and moved her to a bed further into the room.
"Pomfrey, may you please check to see the name of this woman." Dumbledore asked in his grandfatherly voice, hoping to further persuade her.
"I wanted to check her for any other injures first, since she fainted. But checking her blood will only take a moment, so I can check to see if this really is Hagara Potter first." Pomfrey said as she quickly summoned a piece of paper from her storage.
With a gentle prick of the woman's finger, Pomfrey took a bit of blood and sat it on the piece of paper, which quickly absorbed it. Pomfrey handed the paper to Lily as she healed the pricked finger. Dumbledore watched as words slowly appeared on the paper as Pomfrey began taking the armor off the woman to check for more injures.
Lily gasped; Dumbledore read the paper in her hands to see what she saw, and his eyes widened.
"Hagara Potter-Kallig, daughter of James Potter and Lily Evans-Potter."
So their theory was right; this was Hagara Potter, The-Girl-Who-Was-Lost, now found after all this time. Dumbledore was pulled from that thought as he heard Lily quietly sob.
"My baby, my baby is alive." Lily cried as she stared at the piece of paper, almost not believing the happiness it could bring her. Just a small slip of paper could bring her to tears with only a sentence on it.
Dumbledore let her cry; these emotions need to be let out. He was content to just stand there, with Lily crying beside him, but then Pomfrey gasped in shock, causing both Lily and himself to turn over to her to see why she had gasped. He saw Pomfrey was looking down at Hagara and followed her gaze till he froze like his body had been turned to ice.
Pomfrey had removed the top half of her armor, with only her bra remaining to cover her top. The rest was just skin, heavily, horrifyingly scarred skin; it was like a maze of scars across her body: lashes, cuts, stabs, chunks of flesh ripped out and replaced, and so many burns, the burn scars doubled all the other scars combined. It was almost sickening to see so many scars on a body, but it was sickening to know they were on someone so young, even if this person was older than they were supposed to be.
"This will take a very long time to even begin fully healing. But what is good is that most of these injures are old, and are not an actual danger to Hagara's health, so the transportation itself was most likely the cause of her fainting. I still want to check over the rest of her to be safe, which means that you have to leave Albus." Pomfrey said sternly, giving no room for argument, not that Dumbledore would actually argue to stay.
He needed to check up on the rest of the professors as well, and Pomfrey would be able to help Lily if something arose, so he walked to the door. When he reached the door, he turned around and asked Lily if she wanted him to call James to Hogwarts and nodded after she confirmed that she did.
He stepped out of the medical wing and sighed; it was a long, heavy sigh. After he sighed, he began walking to his office to call James, knowing that he would have to go calm down the professors after he did so.
Perspective Shift: Lily
Lily stared down at her daughter, overwhelming sadness and joy battling inside her soul. After all this time, she had thought her daughter had been dead, but she was here now, and not lost, she was alive. But her daughter was grown, not even fourteen like she should be at this time; she had not had a good life, the horrifying state of her body spoke volumes to that.
She gently ran her finger across one of Hagara's older scars; it was thin and white and extended from her knuckle to almost her elbow; it must have been a horrible cut when she got it. Out of the corner of her eye, Lily noticed something on the underside of the forearm, twisting her daughter's hand gently, so her palm was facing up; she saw what was on the underside of her forearm; it made her sick to her stomach.
Hieroglyphs of some sort, burned into the underside of her forearm; it was a branding. Lily trembled slightly, she did not know what the hieroglyphs meant, and she wasn't sure if she wanted to, but even without knowing what it said, she knew that it was a brand. Her daughter was branded; it was horrible to imagine, but it wasn't imagination; it was reality.
"Pomfrey." Lily croaked weakly as she stared at the brand, tears pooling in her eyes the longer she stared at it.
Pomfrey rushed over onto the side of the bed Lily was on and froze when she saw what was on Hagara's forearm. She gently approached the arm, moving like it was a deranged animal, weary that it would jump at her any second.
"I'm so sorry, Lily." Was all Pomfrey said, and really Lily didn't know what else she could say, because nothing would make this better, nothing would make this okay.
"Do you want to help me get the rest of her clothes off Lily?" Pomfrey asked.
Lily knew she offered it to distract from the branding, but she also really wanted to be distracted by it, so she agreed to help get the rest of Hagara's clothes off. Pomfrey walked her over to her daughter's hip and showed her how to unbuckle them; the problem was that there were many buckles on the pants to keep them on, so it was more effectively done with two people or someone who was very familiar with the clothes.
After a minute, they managed to get all the buckles undone; removing the skirts, they began pulling the pants off, only to realize that the boots needed to come off first. Which really was a given, but with how the boots had been almost mixed with the pants it was hard to tell if it was one article of clothing or not.
The boots had more buckles on them, but since Pomfrey and Lily were now more familiar with the buckles on these clothes, it was not as hard to completely unbuckle them; sliding them off was actually really easy, considering how stiff they were. She did not wear socks under her boots, but the inside of the boots was actually really soft, so socks weren't needed.
Pomfrey and Lily then went back up to the armored pants. They pulled them off, so Hagara was now only in her bra and underwear, exposing almost every scar and wound entirely, though she feared that there were more scars hidden under the tiny bit of clothes left on her daughter.
"I need to look over all these scars and see if any are not already fully healed; you are welcome to stay, Lily, but it will be a long process, and it will not be a very pleasant one to see." Pomfrey warned, but Lily stayed anyway; she would not leave her daughter, not for a second.
Time Jump:
The process of watching Pomfrey check over every single scar on Hagara's body had been hard. Lily had tried at the beginning to count all the scars, but she had lost count after about a hundred and fifty, mostly due to how much it pained her to know how many scars covered her child's body.
And she really had learned about all the scars, as Pomfrey had taken off the undergarments for a short time to look over and see if any scars needed additional healing on her genitalia. Luckily there were not any that needed healing; there were actually very few on her genitalia in general. While it was a small blessing, it still helped Lily that her daughter had at least not been too terribly harmed in one of her most precious places.
Other good news was that Hagara fainting had nothing to do with any untreated injure. After several intensive scans from Pomfrey, it was actually found that Hagara was just intoxicated. Lily cringed at the prospect of magic travel while under the influence of alcohol and was not surprised that someone would faint because of it.
With these discoveries, Hagara had gotten put into a medical gown and moved to a bed built more for sleeping and less for medical examination and treatment. Lily had had to carry Hagara's clothes over to her new bed and now stared down at the metal cylinder that had been on her belt.
The cylinder was very intricate, with weaving veins of metal curling over each other, twisting around until they created the cylinder's general shape. Both ends of the cylinder had a wide rim that sunk into the cylinder, with a smaller cylinder that stuck back out of the wider cylinder in the center of the dip; this small cylinder had a small, almost pinpoint hole in the center that Lily couldn't see down.
It was very beautiful, and Lily wondered if it was like a wand in any way, since it didn't seem like that useful of an object; though she did remember the red blade of light that it made when Hagara first appeared.
She would fiddle around with it, but she didn't want to offend her daughter by messing with her stuff; it would break her heart if the first feeling that Hagara had for her was something as negative as that. So she would only look at it; perhaps it would also be better if she didn't hold it.
With that thought, she set it down on Hagara's bedside table in the medical wing, so it would be easy for her to access it when she woke up; because if it was like a wand, it would be comforting to have close by. When she set it down, Lily moved her hand to brush Hagara's hair in a comforting, motherly manner, and it almost brought her to tears again. It was such a simple action, but it was an action that had been stolen from her for so long, and being able to simply do what was so easily taken for granted was so special.
Lily could happily spend all day just sitting here, watching over her daughter. With the champions already announced, it would be a while before either she or Barty would be needed for anything so she could actually spend her time here. She stroked Hagara's hair again with that thought; the action was calming but made her heart race at the same time with the excitement of being able to do it.
The medical wing door opened slightly, and Dumbledore stepped in; he looked around the room before spotting Lily; once he did, he walked over to her at a relaxed pace. His rainbow robes made him appear to be gliding across the floor, and she had to suppress a snort, he always had a strange robe on, but this one just gave the strangest impression; an old man, with a long white beard gliding across the floor, while wearing a rainbow.
He was smiling when he reached her, his eyes on her petting Hagara's hair gently. His eyes then turned to her, his half-moon glasses enhancing the sparkle in his eyes; he spoke to her with a gentle voice.
"I called James's Floo Network. He is currently working and couldn't answer, so it will probably be a while before he gets in contact with me. Since her health isn't urgent, I saw no need to demand his presence. I also did not inform him of why I called him to Hogwarts, so you have the option to tell him; if you don't, I will still happily inform him." Dumbledore looked back to Hagara as he spoke; his tone was kind like his words.
"Thank you, Professor, I will tell him though," Lily said, to which Dumbledore nodded; he seemed like he was going to walk back out before he spoke up again.
"I figure you will be in here for a while, so enjoy yourself." Dumbledore pulled out a book from the sleeve of his rainbow robe and handed it to her, looking over the title Lily saw that it was a children's book.
"I've heard that reading to a child is a great bonding experience, I'm sure it is still one; no matter how old the child is." With that, Dumbledore headed out, closing the door to the medical wing softly as he left.
Lily watched him leave, and after he was gone, she crossed her legs and sat the book between them. She opened the book to the first page as she set her free hand on Hagara's head, petting her hair softly as she began to read aloud.
Tell me what you think, I have a few more chapters prewritten so they should come out soon(ish). Give me your thoughts and theories I love seeing speculation.
Thank you for reading!
