Hogwarts and the Dueling Tournament
Chapter 1 - A Prophetic Dream
Harry Potter sighed as he fell further into the large leather armchair that he was sitting in. He could still feel his muscles complaining from the heavy strain that he had put them through that day. Days in Knockturn Alley always caused his muscles to feel like this nowadays. He complained mentally that this used to be easier when he was in his twenties.
There had been a lot of action today in particular. There had been a dealer selling illegally brewed polyjuice potion deep in the alley. There was a slew of recent robberies that had evidence of illegal polyjuice use, and Harry had been tasked with discovering where the illegal polyjuice was coming from.
After a few days of investigating no evidence was popping up. The Alley people, as usual, seemed entirely reluctant to let an auror in to do any sort of investigating, even when it is for their benefit. He could have been looking for weeks if not for the tip from the vampires that they were stationed in a rundown warehouse deep into an offshoot of Knockturn Alley, almost reaching Maxim Alley. He led a group of five aurors into the warehouse where they found the equipment that was being used to mass produce the polyjuice. Unfortunately, they also discovered that the people that were producing the polyjuice had also hired some muscle.
Harry stretched his shoulders irritably as he recalled the fight that had broken out.
Harry saw there were seven hostile agents coming at them. All male, and all looked to be at least 180 centimeters tall. Four of the men had already drawn their wands, with two others going for knives. The last one took the opportunity to turn away from them and ran behind a wall.
Harry motioned with his hand for the aurors behind him to engage the enemy and the other four auror fanned out to cover all of the exits from the warehouse.
Harry sent out several stunners into the crowd of the thugs. Some of the thugs dove out of the way, but they landed in a way that didn't allow them to immediately counterattack with a spell of their own before having to quickly readjust their positioning. Those that didn't dodge used large shields to block their entire fronts, which quickly overblowed the threat of the small stunners Harry used.
'So that's what we're dealing with' Harry thought as he assessed the threat level of the people he was dealing with. They were not complete novices to a duel, but they were not the best in terms of the subtle intricacies of a fight. The two that had used shields to block the stunners must have a lot of confidence in the size of their magical core, and the others either had smaller cores or were intelligently saving their magic.
Before the thugs could gain their bearings, Harry sent out a stasis charm to cover the volatile ingredients that made up polyjuice and transfigured tables that the materials were on to four large stone wolves.
The wolves ran over to the two wizards who had raised shields and rammed into the shields repeatedly. The wizards had to continue to hold the shields up, lest the wolves get within the shields and start to bite at them. Harry could see the strain on their faces as they struggled to maintain a shield around their entire body while wolves were banging against the shields.
Harry then cast a freezing spell with a cry of 'Glacius!' at the ground with the other thugs that had tried to dodge. The floor around the thugs quickly frosted over with slippery ice. Harry clicked his heels together and the runes that activated a sticking charm activated, and he landed solidly on the ground as he looked over to the thugs. All four of them were currently in the process of trying to stand up again, and the sudden loss of friction with the ground caused them all to fall to the ground.
Harry began rapid firing off combinations of 'Incarcerous!' and 'Stupefy!' to neutralize the thugs rolling around the ground.
One of the thugs had managed to get to his feet and avoid the spells that Harry was sending at him. He brandished a knife and advanced onto Harry, swinging the knife wildly.
Harry's free hand slipped down to his side, where the combat knife was sheathed, and took it out to block a swipe from the thug in one fluid motion.
The sudden block of his knife combined with the slippery floor caused the thug to lose balance and stumble which allowed Harry to finally tag him with a 'Stupefy!'
With all of the combatants neutralized for the time being, Harry felt his pulse to a more manageable level as the adrenaline began to subside. He unfroze the ground, deactivated his sticking shoes, and motioned for the aurors that had accompanied him to get the thugs ready to be moved.
Then, Harry heard a loud growl coming from deeper in the warehouse. He turned his head to see the seventh thug had returned and was leading a cerberus into the front of the warehouse. Flashes of a cerberus falling asleep flickered past Harry's mind and he opened his mouth to start to hum a tune but stopped when he heard that that was what the thug was doing.
The thug was singing a deep and angry tune and the cerberus seemed to be responding unusually to it. Instead of falling asleep, the cerberus seemed to be growing more and more agitated. Harry took a step back as his mind ran through all of the possible ways he could think of subduing the cerberus peacefully. Its thick fur caused it to be resistant to spells like stunners or bludgeoners.
Harry couldn't think any longer because at that moment, the cerberus charged at him. All three heads had their jaws wide to try to bite into him. Harry propelled some magic out of the bottom of his foot and dove to the right. He flew a few feet and rolled to get into a kneeling position. The cerberus had continued its charge until it hit the wall painfully.
The cerberus turned and Harry could see that the full speed collision had caused some of its teeth to crack and fall out of its mouth. This seemed to anger the cerberus further. The middle head let out an unearthly roar and the cerberus began to charge again. Harry tapped a rune on his boots to activate a different spell this time. He shot up and started running towards the cerberus to greet its challenge
Moments before the three heads sunk their teeth into Harry, he jumped up 10 feet into the air. There was a rune on his boots that activated a jumping charm and caused the size of his jumps to exponentially increase.
At the peak of his height, Harry started summoning ropes to bind the cerberus. He started wrapping rope around the middle and right head to tie the two together, and therefore leave them both unable to attack, but the left head clamped its head on the ropes and snapped them.
Harry then started conjuring larger metal chains, and he could feel the heavy drain the intensive spell was putting on his magic. He landed on the back and started looping the chain wherever he could. Around the left head, to the middle head, to the left front foot, right head, right front foot, left front foot again, middle head, left head, right front foot, and middle head again.
The cerberus was now completely subdued by the length of the chain and Harry turned back to the last thug, who had gone pale white at the spectacle he had just witnessed.
Harry rubbed at his eyes as a headache started to come over him. The amount of paperwork that he was going to have to do was immense. The group that he had apprehended had done magical experimentation on a cerberus to alter its behavior when listening to music. Instead of falling asleep when hearing music, the beast now became extremely agitated and attacked anyone that it could get its teeth into. Harry had had to call in a mazoologist in before they were able to remove the cerberus from the scene.
And he couldn't stop thinking about the vampire that the tip had come from. While the vampire didn't ask for anything unreasonable in response for the information, just the fact that the vampire betrayed the Alley code to give it was certainly going to be causing problems in the future.
He stared at the fireplace in front of him for a long time. He still was feeling a bit down, as he usually was this time of year, because the anniversary of the Battle of Hogwarts was only a few days ago. He had somehow managed to weasel his way out of having to give any form of speech, but that didn't make the day any easier. Teddy had given a speech this year, because he was head boy. Harry could still hear some of the people crying in his head from the way Teddy had talked about his parents that he had never met.
Harry felt a hand rest on his shoulder and he looked up to see Ginny holding out a mug of butterbeer for him. He thanked her with a small smile and she cuddled up close to him on his right. Albus was reading a fictional adventure book and Lily was playing absentmindedly with a toy snitch that kept flying around her head.
Harry felt himself relax as he looked around at his family, completely content, when he heard a telephone ring.
It was extraordinary for the telephone at 12 Grimmauld Place to ring, seeing as it had never rung before. Harry did not have very many connections to the muggle world. In fact, Harry had no connections to the muggle world. He had not stayed in contact with the Dursleys after the war. The last time that he had talked to any of them was when he helped them to move back to 4 Privet Drive and gave Dudley the phone number to call if he ever needed to talk to Harry.
So it was not an exaggeration to say that Harry was freaking out at that moment. Lily and Albus looked slightly confused by what was making the foreign ringing, but returned to what they were doing without any fuss. Ginny looked a little worried at Harry as she had noticed how the relaxation had immediately left him. Harry excused himself from Ginny and slowly made his way over to where he kept the phone in a rarely used corner of the sitting room.
He picked up the phone and opened it up to answer the call.
"Hello?" Harry asked unsurely.
"Harry? Is that you?" a gruff voice answered on the other end.
"Yes, this is Harry. Who's calling?"
"Oh… um. This is Dudley."
Harry felt a stone drop in his stomach at the confirmation of who was calling him.
"Hi Dudley." Harry responded coldly. He saw that all of the heads of his family had shot up to stare right at him after he said that name. He had told his family stories about the Dursleys and they knew that they had not treated him the best.
"Hey Harry. Um… could you come over? As soon as possible?" Dudley asked.
"Um… Alright. Do you still live in Privet Drive?"
"Er… yeah we moved back to be with mum and dad."
"Ok. I'll be there as quickly as I can." Harry hung up the phone and dropped it down to the table. He felt as if his heart was beating a million times a minute. Flashes of his childhood danced across his mind. Weeding the garden, waking up to Dudley slamming down the stairs, burning his hand on the pan while making breakfast, Ron and the twins coming to rescue him in the flying Ford Anglia.
"Harry, who was that?" Ginny asked after a moment of silence. Harry looked up to see his family giving him concerned looks.
"That was Dudley," Harry answered, which caused Ginny's eyes to widen. "He asked if I could come over as soon I could."
"Are you alright with that?" Ginny asked worriedly.
"I'll be fine," Harry answered with a small smile. "It must be important if he's calling me so suddenly and out of the blue for it."
Ginny looked worried but allowed him to go. Harry felt guilty over constantly having to say goodbye to her, too often knowing that it might become a real goodbye if something went wrong. He kissed Lily's forehead goodbye and ruffled up Albus's hair before heading for the door. He picked up a cloak to keep himself warm over his jeans and t-shirt and left the house.
As soon as he walked out, a cold gust of wind brushed up against him, reminding how oddly cold it was for a day in May. He took a few steps away from the door before he turned into apparition.
He arrived quietly at the end of Privet Drive. Everything around him was eerily similar to what he remembered in his childhood. He recognized a familiar crack in the sidewalk, a tree with low branches that a child could easily climb, a park with a rundown swing set, and a familiar street sign signaling Privet Drive. Houses and memories blurred past him before he found himself standing in front of his childhood home.
The house looked smaller than Harry remembered. The house had morphed slowly in his mind. He didn't think of it as a real space much anymore, instead associating it with long hours spent in the cupboard or the feelings of isolation and hate he so often felt in his youth. 4 Privet Drive sitting there with a white picket fence and perfectly trimmed bushes just didn't seem to have that same negative energy it did when he was a child.
Harry rang the doorbell and waited for someone to come and greet him. The man that opened the door was almost unrecognizable to Harry's overweight cousin. Dudley was a very tall and very muscular man that had very little similarities to the boy Harry knew, only having the shade of sandy brown hair to recognize him by.
"Harry…" the man… Dudley breathed.
"Hey Dudley," Harry said. "You called for me?"
Dudley blinked a few times before opening the door wider to allow Harry to come inside the house. Harry stepped in and Dudley closed the door without so much as a second glance outside.
Harry felt that he had stepped back in time. The same walls, the same colors, the same smells. He felt as if he was 10 years old again, wondering how much food he was going to be allowed to have at his next meal. The floor, the stairs, and the lights brought up so many memories that Harry had thought that he had left behind. His eyes were drawn towards the cupboard under the stairs.
The door had been removed and the cupboard had been replaced with a stack of shelves that held shoes. Harry knelt down and ran his hand over where the door used to be. He could feel some wetness coming to his eyes as he remembered the boy that used to live in that cupboard. The boy that prayed for nothing more than to have a family of his own that would love him unconditionally in the way that Petunia and Vernon loved Dudley. Harry wanted so badly to reach back to that boy and tell him that he would find that family.
Harry rose to his feet to see that Dudley was looking pale with guilt. He looked as if he was going to blow away if someone merely blew in his direction, which contrasted greatly with the huge muscular man that he was.
"So what is it that you called me here for?" Harry asked in a colder tone than he thought that he was going to use. Dudley flinched.
"Why don't you come into the sitting room," Dudley suggested.
Dudley walked deeper into the house and Harry followed him into the kitchen. Harry spotted pictures depicting several people that Harry didn't know, but Vernon and Petunia still were hanging around in a few of them. Harry saw three kids sitting around the table and a woman with long blond hair standing with her back to him.
Dudley motioned for him to sit down and Harry took an uneasy seat in a chair that he didn't recognize. Harry looked at the kids that were sitting around him. The oldest was a boy that looked a few years older than James. The girl looked to be about Albus' age and looked incredibly distraught. The youngest looked to be a toddler that seemed to be having trouble sitting still.
Harry's eyes were drawn to the girl again. She was sitting with her legs curled up to her chest and her blond hair was covering most of her face. He was, however, able to make out that her eyes shown a bright light blue. Something seemed to click into place in Harry's mind and he looked up to ask a question.
"So which of your children is magical?"
"Clover," the woman said, who Harry now was able to see that he recognized. He shot to his feet in shock. He found his hand straying to his wand out of reflex and had it out and pointed towards the woman before he was even fully standing.
In front of him stood Daphne Greengrass, a woman that had been presumed dead ever since the Battle of Hogwarts. Well, either dead or hidden so well that no one would ever be able to find her. She had been the second smartest person in their year right behind Hermione.
"What are you doing here!?" Harry said in shock.
"I live here, Potter," she said. "Geez are you still really this dense after all these years?"
"What? You live here? Why would a pure-"
"Are you really that much of an imbecile that you can't see why someone would live in a house. Gods, am I being punished? What kind of ironic force in the universe would make me accidentally marry into the Potter family? I think anyone would have been preferable to this. I think I would have preferred accidentally marrying Snape's bastard to this."
"M-marry?" Harry asked stupidly.
"So, uhh," Dudley said. "I assume that you two know each other?"
Harry took a long breath before putting his wand away. "Yeah, we were in the same year together at Hogwarts." Dudley flinched at that. "But I knew her as Daphne Greengrass."
"Greengrass?" Dudley wondered. "I thought your last name was Snow."
"I threw that name away when I left the wizarding world," Daphne answered with a scowl. "I just took up Snow based on a nickname I had gotten."
"You've been missing for 19 years," Harry continued. "You do know that everyone who knew you thinks you're dead."
Daphne's face grew stone cold before she spat out a quiet "good".
"I left the wizarding world after the Battle of Hogwarts and I haven't looked back once. I haven't used magic in years.
Harry felt the tension lessen in his shoulder as he put his wand back in its holster. He recognized the courage that Daphne must have had to completely abandon the world that she had grown up in and enter into a world she must have known next to nothing about. Another thought popped into his head.
"My condolences," Harry said, which caused Daphne to fix him with another pointed look. "For the loss of your sister."
Daphne stilled as she processed what Harry said. "Astoria's dead?"
Harry felt something flip in his stomach as he realized that she didn't even know about her own sister's death and he only nodded.
"Serves her right," Daphne snorted. "She may not have been a Death eater but that wasn't for a lack of trying."
Harry couldn't argue that point but he still had his share to say. "Her son is still alive."
"I don't want him," Daphne bit out coldly. "I don't want anything to do with purebloods anymore."
Harry was about to say something else before Daphne forcefully changed the topic.
"So Dudley called you here about Clover. She just awoke to her magic today, which is her eleventh birthday and she just gave a prophecy."
Harry's veins turned to ice upon hearing the word prophecy. If 4 Privet Drive had given him flashes of old memories, then the idea of prophecies gave him full on flashbacks to his time in the war.
"What did it say?" Harry choked out through the constriction in his chest. Daphne gave him a long look before she began to recite the prophecy that she had heard.
The reckoning of our world approaches,
On one day, the twelve shall decide
If the founder's head will die,
If another founder will fall,
If flowing are will be stilled,
If the soldier will fall to temptation,
If the connection will be cut,
If the scholar gains his knowledge,
If the caged flame with fly,
If the puppet's strings will be cut,
If the monster will feed,
If the demon will take the throne,
Or if the god will be born and rise.
And when there is only one left in the end,
They shall decide if man shall die.
The reckoning of our world approaches.
Harry's heart felt like it had stopped as he heard the words of the prophecy. That was bad. Extraordinarily bad in some cases. If man shall die echoed in his head as he tried to understand anything that the prophecy was talking about.
"That's not good," he said finally.
"Oh you got that?" Daphne mocked. "Didn't think Gryffindors could even tell a prophecy from a tea leaf reading."
"I'd know more about prophecies than you would think."
"Not as much as I would," Daphne said. "The Greengrasses have been known to give birth to a seer every few generations for hundreds of years."
"Then I probably broke a few of their prophecies when I broke into the Department of Mysteries."
Daphne just stared at him with a slack jaw for a few moments before shaking her head and muttering to herself. "How did you ever avoid being thrown through the veil for the stuff you come up with?"
"It was a close call for a few of my adventures."
Daphne shook her head. "I fail to understand how you are not dead several times over."
"Join the club."
"Umm," Dudley chimed in. "This is a lot to take in at once. I didn't even know you were a witch three hours ago. Now you're a witch, our daughter is a witch, and our daughter is a seer? Can I have an explanation?"
Daphne's cold face that she had been using to talk to Harry with seemed to immediately melt away as she turned back to her husband.
"I'm so sorry Dudley," she said earnestly. "I'm not proud of the person that I was when I was a witch. I used to believe in some very terrible things, and in that world there are too many who would want nothing more than for people like us to be dead at their feet. I wanted to leave that part of me behind when… when everything happened. I was always going to tell you if I saw any of our kids doing magic, but Jason never showed any signs and then Clover didn't and Vern isn't even old enough for magic to really start happening. I didn't think about how they might inherit the seer gift, and I'm so sorry that I never told you and I'm sorry."
Daphne seemed to be slowly descending into incoherent mumbling as tears started to fall from her eyes. Dudley pulled his wife close and started saying encouraging words about not being sorry and everything being alright.
Harry walked away from the couple back to the kids in the sitting room. He approached Clover and sat down beside her.
"Hey Clover," he said. "I'm your uncle Harry."
The girl removed her head from between her legs for the first time since Harry arrived and she looked up to him with tear streaks down her cheeks.
"I hear that you just found out that you're a witch," he started again. "You should have seen the first time that I found out that I was a wizard. A half-giant told me after he knocked down the front door to give me a birthday cake he had sat on."
Clover just looked up at him with wide eyes as if she wasn't fully seeing him at that moment.
"I know that everything that you are going to learn soon is going to be overwhelming, I know that it was for me, but you're always going to have people who love and support you. I know that your mum and dad support you, and I've got a son who's about your age that I think you'd get along great with."
"Albus and James are going to hate me," Clover said.
Harry opened his mouth to respond to that before realizing that he had never said their names. He took another at Clover and found that she wasn't really meeting his eyes. In fact, she seemed to be looking around Harry, as if she was seeing something that Harry couldn't.
"Clover," Harry said. "Can you tell me what you remembered happening when you were giving the prophecy?"
Clover focused on him for a long moment before she started talking. "It was black for a long time. It felt like I was stuck in the black for hours. Then a big hall appeared all of a sudden." She shivered.
"There were 4 long tables, and they all had different colors. And there were animals, but they all looked like they were hurt. The lion looked like he was really scared, the snake had its teeth pulled out, the badger looked like he was eating his own foot, and the bird looked like it was dead."
"And there was a hat there that I talked to," Clover said. "He said that the change is coming. The reckoning is coming and there is nothing that anyone is going to be able to do to stop it. And there was someone who was covered in shadow. They…" Clover trailed off and looked like she was afraid.
"They hurt me," she said after a long moment. "They hurt me really badly. There was a firebird, the candles burnt my skin, the forks kept stabbing me, the table crushed my ankle, and a knife poked my eye." She shivered all over. "It's going to happen this year."
Harry stood up a little dazed and walked back over to Daphne and Dudley.
"I think I've got to go and talk to some people about that prophecy," he started. "But Dudley, I don't want to go another twenty years before we talk to each other again. When Clover's Hogwarts letter comes you should come shopping with us for the day. My son is going to be starting Hogwarts this year too."
"Will Clover even be getting a letter?" Dudley asked.
"Her mother was a student there, so yes," Harry said. "Also I'm not completely sure but it might have also been possible for it to be traced over from my mother and me but I'm not completely sure about that."
"Err…" Dudley said. "I'd love to join you then. To get her er…. Stuff for school."
Daphne looked displeased at this but also nodded her consent.
When Harry got home, Lily and Albus seemed to already be in bed. Ginny, however, had stayed up for him by the fire. He collapsed next to her and she cuddled up close to him.
"How was it? She asked.
"Dudley married Daphne Greengrass and today was their daughter's eleventh birthday," Harry paused. "And she gave a prophecy."
"Oh my," she said in shock. A few long moments passed before she spoke again. "How bad is it going to be?"
"It's bad," Harry said. "I think it's going to be very bad."
They sat there cuddled together for a long time before Ginny started to nod off. Harry carried her up to bed before he came back down to stare at the fire for a while longer.
"Dad?" a voice called out.
Harry turned around to see that Albus had come downstairs, and was wiping at his eyes.
"Everything alright Albus?"
"I just heard you come back downstairs."
"Sorry for waking you."
"That's fine. Did everything go alright?"
"Well… I think I found a friend for you for Hogwarts. Clover Dursley is going to be in your year."
Albus scowled for a second before his face became neutral again.
"I'm worried about Hogwarts actually."
"Whatever for?"
"I'm worried about what house I'll get sorted into."
"Albus," Harry said kindly. "It doesn't matter what house you get into, we'll all love you all the same. It doesn't matter between Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, and Slytheirn."
The scowl appeared back on his face for a fleeting moment.
"I know that but… James seems to be the perfect Gryffindor."
"James is anything but the perfect Gryffindor," Harry sighed deeply. "With the amount of letters I've received from teachers he is lucky that your mother and I haven't taken him out of Hogwarts yet."
"Yeah but he's brave and courageous and always does anything no matter the consequences."
"He should take the consequences in."
"It's just that… I don't know. I don't ever feel very courageous. Or hardworking. Or ambitious for that matter. I don't even want to feel different. I really just want to be with everyone in Gryffindor, but I don't feel like a Gryffindor."
"The Sorting Hat always puts you where you best belong. And you can even ask the hat to put you where you want."
"Yeah, I already know dad." Albus gave a smile then, but Harry thought that it looked a bit forced. "I should go to bed now it's late."
Harry saw Albus turn and the smile immediately left his face as he went back up the stairs.
Harry sighed as he fell further into his leather armchair. He could feel his brain protesting from the heavy emotional strain that he had put it under that night. Reliving his past always seemed to hurt more than it should've. He reached up to his forehead to try to wipe away the headache.
He had a lot to do tomorrow. He had learned a lot tonight from the Dursleys and he was going to have to tell a lot of different people a lot of different things tomorrow. His ongoing investigations into the Freebloods had to continue, as well as his investigation into the rogue dementor which was proving to be very frustrating. Harry sighed again.
Everything was starting to feel a little bit too familiar to him now. He could feel something in the air, like the charge in the air right before a storm came. There was something brewing on the horizon and Harry didn't like the feeling of it. And this prophecy definitely didn't help at all.
He resolved to go to Hogwarts to talk to McGonagall to try to alleviate at least some of his worries about the future. He rose to his feet, ignoring the small complaints that his legs screamed out, and raised his want to put out the fire.
"Please let there not be another war," Harry said as the fire extinguished. "I don't know if we'll be able to get through another one."
A/N: This is the second time this story has been published. I had the full story planned and about 4/21 chapters planned, but I didn't like the way that it was turning out. So, I took a long break, made some other stories, posted a few other chapters, and then I came back to this story. I did a lot of reworking and cut out a few of the POV characters that weren't the most interesting and streamlined a few things. Now, I'm happy with where the story is at. I have a 30 page story outline that I'm going to be following and all that's left for me to do is actually turn the outline text into an actual story.
I have put a lot of work into this story and I am confident that the story itself is amazing, the only thing that I fear might struggle is my ability to tell the story I have in my head. But its fanfiction at the end of the day so there isn't anything but my pride and time on the line here.
The ideas for this story have been kicking around in my head since 2018 and have gone through a lot of changes over time. When I get further into the story I'd like to share some of the more humorous changes that really tickle me for one reason or another.
The main inspiration of this story is the Gray series by Fiery Gray, which is hands down my favorite piece of media. Yeah I said media. I think its better than every tv show, book, youtube video, movie, song, and animation that I have ever consumed. It's so amazing and it's criminal that more people don't have their eyes on it. Other inspirations come from The Pureblood Pretense by murkybluematter, and Fate by TheTrueSpartan. To be honest this whole thing is a love letter to my obsession with Gray.
Anyways this is chapter 1 out of 21. All other chapters are made up of 4-7 POV sections with each section more or less being the size of this chapter. So it'll take a bit for me to write the book but I'm planning to post a chapter as soon as I'm done with it.
Oh and if someone wants to beta this piece of shit, I don't know that social norms for doing that so expect me to unintentionally be an asshole if you choose to engage with this that way.
