Chapter 32

Harry slammed against the ground and gasped for breath as the air was snatched from his lungs. The trophy slipped from his grasp, and he pushed himself away from the dead Malfoy he had managed to accidentally bring along for the ride.

He sent a silent thanks to whichever idiot had thought to make the Portkey go back to the arena—probably so that they could send his body back and strike fear into their enemies. If they hadn't, he would've been in a much worse condition. And with his wand and sword lost, clothes shredded, and skin gashed, there wasn't much worse a state he could be in whilst still being alive.

'You have the luck of the gods,' Loki said.

Harry coughed up some blood and spat it into the dirt. 'No luck, just skill.' He coughed up some more blood.

He glanced up to see where he had landed, and found it not to be in the maze, but in a small stadium, crowds seated all around him. They had been cheering, but most of that seemed to have vanished, probably a result of the black-cloaked corpse lying in the dirt next to Harry.

With a groan, he climbed to his feet, cracking his back and casting his gaze to Lord Voldemort's wand, still in his hand. It was surprisingly fitting for him—much better than any other wand he had tried. Not his own, of course, but it was nearly as good.

He could feel Loki healing his body, and after a few moments, he guessed he would be able to speak without damaging anything too severely.

"Hello, audience," he said. "As you might have guessed from my ragged appearance—a state only the strongest of foes could inflict upon me—I just finished fighting the mighty Lord Voldemort."

The crowd was now silent.

"Anyway, although I totally and utterly kicked his arse, he still managed to resurrect himself, so he looks slightly less like a failed snake Animagus." Harry coughed up a bit more blood and wiped it across his shirt. "I killed his followers though—I mean, he killed them, accidentally. I would never do anything so immoral."

He kicked the mask off of Malfoy's face.

"I will swear under oath that Voldemort killed this guy, something Malfoy." He reconsidered. "Actually, I won't swear any oaths for the same reason that the gods don't reveal themselves to you. I need you to believe me because of faith, not some easily faked evidence that happens to take the form of a dead Malfoy."

'Please stop rambling; I think you may have hit your head a bit too hard.'

"My imaginary friend says I should leave…so…yeah. Bye, I guess."

With that final defiant statement, he marched for the exit. No one attempted to stop him.

As soon as he was in the castle, Harry took off at a jog, heading for his room. He packed his belongings in half a minute, and then was heading out the door—and straight into Dumbledore.

He sighed. "Hello, Dumbledore."

"Hello, Harry." Dumbledore glanced to the backpack on his shoulder. "You're leaving, I presume?"

"Yes, I think it would be best to go on a little vacation whilst Lord Voldemort knows where I am." He smiled, blood trickling from the corner of his mouth. "Not that I'm running or anything. I, a fourteen-year-old, am totally a match for him—who survived a spear through the chest, I might add."

Dumbledore sighed. "Hogwarts is—"

"—the safest place on Earth," Harry finished for him. "Someone just happened to manage to divert my Portkey to a graveyard in the middle of nowhere."

Dumbledore peered at him over his glasses. "I was actually going to admit that it is probably not the best place to be until I have had time to further investigate what went wrong."

"Oh," Harry said. He went silent for a moment. "Well, if you don't mind, I'll be leaving. I'll send a letter with the details of the encounter later."

"Of course." Dumbledore stepped aside. "But if you don't mind, how many Death Eaters were there?"

Harry walked past him and did not look back. "Fourteen," he said. His lips twitched up into a smile. "You won't have to worry about those ones—not unless you have a much bigger problem with ghosts than I originally thought."

'I see my thorough beat down hasn't damaged my badass lines.'

'Of course not,' Loki said, 'but I somehow doubt those will help against Voldemort.'

Harry snorted. 'Time for a training montage?'

'Time for a training montage.'

'I should probably get a new wand and sword, too,' Harry mused. 'Hey, you think I'm worthy of Thor's hammer?'


Five minutes later, Harry walked up the stairs to Dumbledore's office, dragging the body of who appeared to be Alastor Moody in tow, his head bumping against each stair. He would have levitated him, but he was annoyed at the man—whoever he was.

The gargoyle standing guard to the office's staircase slid aside at an intimidating glare from Harry, and he continued up yet another set of stairs. He shoved Dumbledore's doors open and left the body in the doorway so the doors shut against it.

Dumbledore eyed the body oddly, probably looking to see whether or not he was still breathing. He was.

Harry marched over to the chair and sat down. Only now did Dumbledore see the wand spinning between his fingers and started.

"No," Harry said, "I'm not Voldemort. I just stole the bastard's wand. He stole mine, too."

Slowly, Dumbledore nodded, and then glanced off towards the apparent Auror on the floor. "I assume there is a reason you have come back and brought Professor Moody with you."

"Well, I decided that I needed to come back so you could give me a Portkey to Pompeii—you know, so I could find some ancient volcano magic to defeat Voldemort—and he decided to jump me; I beat him up."

Harry aimed his wand at the body and flicked it, bringing a flask flying across the room and into his hand. "It's got a potion in—I decided not to try and drink it—but I've got no idea what it is."

Dumbledore popped off the lid, sniffed at the contents, and frowned. "Polyjuice."

Harry recognised the name; it was a shape-shifting potion, one that Loki had explicitly warned him off using, lest he face the same fate he had whilst experimenting with shape-shifting. He glanced over to "Moody," who apparently wasn't Moody, just very angry, judging by the nasty things he had been yelling earlier.

Flicking his wand, Dumbledore levitated the body and brought the person hovering over to the desk. He conjured a chair and bound them to it. A spell later, and their features were contorting, shifting into another's.

The man was rather handsome, his features vaguely familiar.

'He similar one of the tournament officials from the Ministry: Barty Crouch.'

"Barty Crouch Jr; he is a follower of Voldemort, and is supposed to be dead," Dumbledore murmured, confirming Loki's guess. He waved his wand and woke Barty up.

He gasped for air and his eyes frantically leapt around the room. He laid eyes on Harry and spat at him.

Harry raised his wand and sent it flying back into his eye. "Be careful," he said, "or the next thing to find its way into your eye will be a knife."

Barty screamed and was silenced a moment later by Harry. "For God's sake, man." He waved his wand about in front of Barty's eyes. "You recognise this?"

Barty did, judging by the rising intensity of his silent screaming and increasing volume of spittle flying from his mouth.

"Yeah, yeah. We all know just how much you want your dark lord's wand up your arse, but I killed him and took it from his cold, dead hands, so it's gonna be my wand up your arse if you don't answer our questions." He frowned. "When I say, 'my wand up your arse,' it's not in the way you're hoping."

"Yes, Harry," came Dumbledore's voice before he could say anything further. "I do not believe any more input is needed from you."

"So rude," Harry muttered. "Now can I have that Portkey?"

One of Dumbledore's eyebrows rose. "I would've thought you would've wanted to stay for this."

"Yeah, yeah." Harry chuckled. "You clearly don't know me very well. I would stay, but I can't be bothered to torture anybody, and you're probably a hell of a lot better than me when it comes to invading people's minds."

Normally, he wouldn't be so open with Dumbledore, but he now likely thought of Harry as far more powerful than he had before: Harry had fought Lord Voldemort himself and survived—a feat that most could not claim. When you took into account that he had killed fourteen Death Eaters at the same time, it became all the more impressive.

No, Dumbledore would be a fool to go against him with the information he currently had. If he knew the true story—that Harry had run away as soon as possible—it would be very different. Alas, he did not, and Harry planned to keep it that way.

"Anyway, can you get on with that Portkey making? And this one better not leave me stranded in a graveyard in the middle of nowhere." He winked at Barty Crouch Jr. "That's where I totally killed Lord Voldemort, by the way. I doubt you'll have time to visit it and leave him some flowers before Dumbledore executes you as not to reveal that he is so incompetent he let a Death Eater pretend to be a teacher for a year."

With a sigh, Dumbledore murmured, "Portus." The spell made a quill glow blue for a moment.

"Thanks," Harry said, picking it up. "What's the activation word?"

Dumbledore's blue eyes twinkled. "Peace and quiet."

Harry had no time to do anything further before the Portkey activated and the world around him became a void of twisting colour.

A moment later, ground solidified beneath his feet. His head spun as he glanced around. He was in Pompeii, as expected, standing amongst ruins that could've been as old as Loki. It wasn't likely there were any magical artefacts in there. He glanced into the distance, where Vesuvius peaked from layers of fog. There probably weren't any volcano monsters there, either.

Pompeii, however, looked like a place Harry might've wanted to go, and was in relatively close proximity to Rome, where the Aureliuses were. Whatever trust Harry might've had that Dumbledore wasn't planning to assassinate him, he certainly didn't want him to know where he was.

Accordingly, he did a quick search of himself for any tracking charms, and, not finding any, made off in the direction of where he hoped the nearest public transportation would be.

A few hours later, Harry was walking through the doors of Aurelius Manor. He moved through into the dining room and found it empty of all but Marco and what was probably his newest girlfriend. They were having dinner, and Harry marched over to them.

He turned to the girl. "I'm sorry, but I don't know your name. What is it?" She opened her mouth to speak, but he carried on. "Scratch that—I don't care. I just wanted to tell you that Marco is breaking up with you to be with me."

Her jaw dropped. She turned to Marco, who groaned and brought a hand to his forehead. "W-what?"

"It's true. Can't you sense the homoerotic tension?" Harry said. "He has a thing for fourteen-year-old boys. Now, if you don't mind…"

He pulled out his wand and sent a stunning spell into her side, and then pushed her out of her chair and sat down.

"Why the hell did you do that?"

Harry shrugged. "You have a new girlfriend every week and are probably cheating on another one with this one at the moment—it's against my morals, you see. I would never do anything like that." He picked up the girl's fork. "I'm also quite hungry and wanted her dinner." He paused. "It might have something to do with me enjoying being obnoxious. Or brain damage."

"For God's sake…"

"Anyway," Harry said, swallowing a mouthful of food. "I need to borrow a private army so I can go and kill a dark lord."