Chapter 1: The Beginning of This Mess
This was supposed to be a crack fic, but my muse said, nope. So I have no idea where it's going.
Anything you recognize is not mine.
Hphphp
It was a nightmare come true. Harry was tied to a statue of an angel, and he was watching Voldemort be reborn. He was scared to death, and he didn't know what to do next. He just hoped that Dumbledore knew where he was and would come and find him soon. Though he knew he was on his own, just like always.
Right now, things were dire and could use a few more people about to help Harry. However, Cedric was dead, his friends were miles away, and the headmaster would be late, as always. If he even showed up at all. While he held great respect for the old man, he was really never there when Harry needed him.
Dumbledore would show up when it was all said and done with pearls of wisdom that rarely made any sense to Harry. Then tell Harry want a good job he did, and that he was a great wizard and the world needed more like him or some such rot. However, Harry always felt like he was being patted on the head like a dog that had done a great trick.
Just then the cauldron sparked, and a naked man stepped from it. He was tall, thin, and pale. His face was narrow without hair, or eyebrows. There was also a distinct lack of a nose. It was very snake like. He was the epitome of evil looking. Something that mums would tell their children to avoid in dark alleys. Harry knows that if he ever saw that in the muggle world, he'd run the other way. Not so much here, but he'd question what potions the man had drank.
"Robe me," Voldemort ordered the mousy man that had brought him back. Wormtail. The man who had killed Cedric, framed Sirius, and betrayed his parents. That was four things Harry hated the man for. Not that he needed more than the last one, but the man just kept piling on more. Harry couldn't wait to see what the ratman would do next.
"Yes, my lord," Peter Pettigrew said, using his only hand to awkwardly throw a robe over the naked man. He fumbled around trying to smooth the robe over the Dark Lord's body as if he was an inept servant.
The snake was slithering around somewhere in the background and Harry could hear that she wanted to eat the ratman. He chuckled a bit at the commentary that was coming from her mouth. That was a mistake because it brought Voldy's attention to him.
"Harry Potter," Voldy said as he looked at the boy. "You stand on the grave of my father," he said, looking around the graveyard, and noting it was getting darker out. "I must call my followers to me. We have much to talk about," he added, holding out his hand for his wand.
Peter handed it over and held his stump of an arm in his good hand not daring to complain as of yet. He knew he would only be punished if he did. He was still whimpering though.
"Your arm, Wormtail," Tom said, his hand held out again.
"Yes, my lord," Peter said, holding out his stump. "Thank you, my lord," he cried.
"Your other arm," the Dark Lord stated firmly, dropping the stump.
"Yes, my lord," the sniveling man said, holding his good arm aloft.
Voldemort called his followers via the Dark Mark on Peter's arm and then healed the stump by giving the man a silver hand. He cautioned the man to never betray him, and he waited to see who would return to him. The Dark Lord started feeling strange and was compelled to let the boy go. He wandered over to the teen who was looking worse for wear. There was dirt streaked along his face and his eyes were bloodshot with fear and tiredness.
He took a good look at his supposed enemy. He remembered the first time he had seen him at the school. He was a scrawny thing, with too big clothes and ugly glasses. He hadn't changed much, though the uniform he was wearing for the tournament fit him, his glasses were still ugly, and he was still scrawny. He wondered if the child ever ate, or was he abused.
"You are not looking well, Harry Potter," he said to the scared boy almost concerned, which made him wary. 'Why,' he wondered, 'am I concerned over the boy?' This was a foreign feeling for him. He was never concerned over anyone or anything. Unless it directly pertained to him. This boy did not affect him.
Voldemort didn't know why he cared all of a sudden. He never cared about things like this before. Was it a passing curiosity? Or did something go wrong in the ritual? He wouldn't put it passed the bumbling coward to have messed it up.
"Yeah, well, it's been a long day. Not to mention, you had Cedric killed," Harry snapped at the snake like man's face. He was in no mood to be coddled by the Dark Lord. Be it false coddling or not. He didn't know what the man's game was, but he wasn't playing. He had enough games with the headmaster.
"You will learn some manners," Tom Riddle said to the teen with a smirk, though he was still leery of hurting the boy. It was like someone would be disappointed in him if he hurt the child, which didn't make any sense. He didn't care what anyone thought of him.
"Better than you have tried," Harry said, stretching in the reaches of his bonds to put himself in the man's noseless face. "They failed too," he added, looking the Dark Lord straight in the eye.
"There are no better than me," Voldemort stated, arching a nonexistent eyebrow at him as the first Death Eater appeared. "Ah, my family has arrived," he said, turning from the boy and moving back to where Peter was still sniveling on the ground.
One by one the Death Eaters appeared in clouds of black smoke. They all fell to their knees, praising their master for his return and begging forgiveness, as they were all frightened for their lives. They never would have thought they would be in this position again. They had lived years at the pinnacle of power and now they were back in the middle of the totem pole.
"I admit I am disappointed," Voldy began, only for another pang to let the boy go to overwhelm him. He was fighting the urge, but the need to see the boy safe was strong. Now that the boy was surrounded by those that would kill him, the urge was stronger than ever. He turned to see if the boy was doing anything to him, but he could see that he was just hanging right where he had left him. "Wormtail, give Harry Potter his wand."
"My lord?" the rat like man questioned from his place in the ranks of the Death Eaters.
"Do not question me," Voldemort said, casting the Cruciatus curse at him for a few seconds and making him scream.
Peter quickly did as he was told, hurrying over to Harry, who sneered at him, and shakenly cut the boy down and gave him his wand. He didn't dare stop for a moment. He quickly got out of the way, thinking the master wanted to play with the teen.
"Take the body and go," Riddle said to Harry, confusing everyone within hearing distance.
"What?" Harry said, thinking he must have misheard. There was no way the Dark Lord was just going to let him go without a fight. He was a raving lunatic, who thought that Harry was his enemy. He wondered how he was supposed to get out and wondered if the cup would take him back. It had brought him here, so he was going to take the chance that it would take him back.
"I am giving you leave to go," Voldemort stated, jerking his head to Cedric's body. "Go."
"Why? So you can curse me in my back?" Harry asked as he slowly made his way to the cup, not turning his back for one second. His wand raised to strike any moment. There was no way he was going to trust the words of a maniac. He didn't know if the cup would return him to Hogwarts, but it was the only option at the moment.
"No, just go. Don't take this to mean we are not enemies, Harry Potter. We will meet in the battlefield," he stated, though he could taste the lie on his lips. He knew something had changed and that this boy was no longer his enemy. He didn't know why it had changed, but the boy was just a victim to him.
"I'll be waiting," Harry said, still making his way to the cup and Cedric's body. He was close now, and he never took his eyes off the men that were crowding the graveyard. Well, he thought they were all men, it was hard to tell with the robes and all.
"Master, are you just going to let him go?" one of the Death Eaters exclaimed, raising his wand to curse the boy.
"Are you questioning me? Have I been gone so long that my word means so little?" Voldy asked, turning to his people, and started throwing curses around to make them remember how much he hated being questioned.
"Forgive me, my lord," the man begged, groveling on his knees. The pain was great, and he had forgotten how great it was.
"There is no forgiveness for insubordination. You will do well to remember who is in charge here," the Dark Lord said, finally stopping his torturing of his followers. He turned just in time to see Harry disappear with the cup and the body. He stood and watched the spot for a long time. He was just so confused.
"Master, what would you have us do?" Malfoy asked after the silence stretched for a while. He had no clue what was going on. He shared a look with his nearest neighbor, and they looked just as confused as he did.
"Go home," Voldemort finally said, not sure where his mind was. He was having too many conflicting thoughts. "I will call you when I am ready to command you," he added, and then he waved them off.
The very bewildered Death Eaters did as they were told and went home.
"Wormtail, clean up this mess and meet me at the manor," the Dark Lord said, turning to leave the graveyard. He was wondering what had happened that he didn't immediately want to go and sow chaos. It was something he was going to have to meditate on.
Hphphp
It was not a frightened out of his mind Harry Potter that landed on Hogwarts grounds, but a calmer and puzzled one. This Harry Potter knew that if he spouted off that he just saw Voldemort reborn, he would be treated like he had at the end of his third year. Fudge would deny it and he would be shoved aside. He didn't know how he would explain Cedric's death. He was going to have to tell a shadow of the truth.
"Cedric, my boy!" came the wailing cry of Mr. Diggory. He ran to the teen's body and threw himself on it as if to prove that it was not dead. It was.
"I'm sorry, sir. We were ambushed," Harry said, spinning his story. "The cup was a portkey to a graveyard. We thought it was part of the tournament, and we tried to stop the man who did this. He just shot off the Killing Curse before we could do anything. I was hit from behind and woke up tied to a headstone and used for a ritual. They let me go when they were done. I don't know who they were, or why they killed Cedric," Harry said as quickly as he could, telling half the story.
"You were tied to a headstone and used for a ritual?" Dumbledore asked, running his hand down his beard in an all-knowing fashion. "But you say you don't know who they were?" he asked as if he knew the boy was lying.
"That's right, I couldn't see them, my glasses were over by the cup," Harry said, hoping they bought that. It was true that he was blind without his glasses.
"How did you escape?" Fudge asked, his eyes darting about as if a bad guy would jump out from the crowd.
"I didn't, they let me go," Harry said, truthfully. "I don't know why. It was really weird. One minute they were calling for my blood, the next the leader just told me to leave," he added with a shrug.
"That is very peculiar," Albus said, still stroking his beard like he was deeply thinking. "Did they not mention any names while they were talking?" he asked, hoping to jar the boy into giving up more.
"Only calling the leader 'master'," Harry answered, not giving anything away. He knew what the man was trying to do, and he wasn't going to fall for it. Something happened in that graveyard that made him wary of the old man. Like something was taken from him to make him see Dumbledore in a new light. It was weird, he had been blindly following him for years, but now he wanted to question everything about him.
"Amelia," Fudge said, turning to the woman with a monocle, "investigate this at once," he ordered her, which made her arch an eyebrow at him.
"Are you presuming to tell me how to do my job?" she inquired with a frosty voice. Fudge held no sway over her, and he knew it. He was just trying to show off.
"No, of course not," he hurriedly stated, holding up his hands and backpedaling as fast as he could. "But a boy is dead," he added, pointing to the dead Cedric, who was still being cried on by his parents.
"I can see that for myself," she said, taking out a notepad and pen, not a quill, but a real pen. "Mr. Potter, come with me and we can talk about this," she said, waving him to the side where they could speak in private.
Harry noticed that Mad-eye Moody was coming closer to them to hear what they were talking about, and he wondered why. He then saw a pink-haired woman crash into the one-legged man and knock him over. He crashed down and his stuff flew everywhere, including his flask. She apologized profusely as she picked it up and noted the smell. She then drew her wand on him.
"Auror Tonks, why are you holding Moody at wand point?" Bones asked, drawing her own wand. If one of her people were holding a wand on someone there had to be a good reason. She wasn't going to stop them until she knew the reasoning.
"That is not Moody," Tonks said, holding the flask out to Amelia to smell.
Bones took a sniff and stunned the imposter. "Keep your wand on him," she said to Tonks. She waved another Auror over and told him to go find the real Moody. "He must be nearby. The imposter would need his hair," she said as she waved him away.
"We've been being taught by an imposter?" Harry said, glaring at the man, who was not who they thought.
"So it would seem," she said, sitting on a wall that was behind her. She waved him to sit beside her. "Tell me everything from the beginning," she said, holding her pen at the ready.
"If I tell you the whole story, will you tell Fudge?" he asked, hoping he could trust her. "I know how he'll react. He did the same when I tried to tell him about Sirius last year," he added, looking at her with wary eyes.
"What is in my report stays in my report, unless it goes to trial," she said, needing to hear the whole story. "You can tell me about Black when I've got your report over today's events," she said, with an air of someone who couldn't wait to hear that story.
So, he told her the whole of it, from the time they landed to the time Tom let him go. Every name that was uttered, to who he recognized. He didn't leave any detail out, not even the embarrassing ones.
It was a long tale, and she was jotting it down in shorthand that only she could read. She knew now why he didn't want to tell Fudge, that man would have blown his top if he thought You-Know-Who was back. Still, there was something fishy about the way the man was acting.
"You did a wonderful job of reporting this. I am glad that you didn't tell anyone but me. I will investigate it to the best of my ability," she said, snapping her notebook shut. "Keep it to yourself, not even your friends. Unless he makes a move, I don't want anyone to know what has happened." She got up and dusted her pants off.
"Okay," he said, though he had never left his friends out of his secrets before. She was the head cop though, so she must know what she was doing.
"Boss," Tonks said from where she was guarding the unconscious man. "He's changing," she said, noting the bubbling skin.
"I guess we'll find out who this is," Bones said, going over to the two. Harry followed along, not having been told he couldn't. They all sat and watch as the man's body changed from a one-eyed, one-legged man to a younger two-eyed, two-legged man.
"Isn't that Barty Crouch Jr.?" Tonks asked, having seen his picture before on Crouch Senior's desk.
"Yes, though he was supposed to be dead," Bones said, more upset that Barty Sr. was dead that she couldn't question him. She never liked that man. He was a huge hypocrite. A stickler for the law for everyone, except for himself. "Oh, well, bag him and we'll pour Veritaserum down his throat when he wakes," she said with a shrug. She would get her answers one way or the other. That and this was probably the man who put the boy's name in the goblet.
Harry was thinking the same thing. "Do you want to hear about Sirius now?" he asked, seeing they were still alone, besides Tonks and the still unconscious Crouch.
"Come over here," Bones said, taking out her notebook again and turning it to a fresh page. She readied her pen and nodded for him to begin. So, he told her the events of last year with the hopes that she could do something for his godfather. When he was done, she closed her notebook and her eyes. "I will do what I can. I can't believe that Fudge messed this up so badly. Have your godfather write a solicitor, and we'll see about getting him exonerated," she said, standing and straightening her shirt.
"I'll tell him," Harry said, standing up and holding out his hand to her. He was just glad that she seemed to want to help.