More Tri-Wizard tasks.
Classes proceeded quite satisfactorily, and Harry was irritated when he ate lunch before the next event. Greengrass had stayed out of his way, and Harry hadn't been hexed in the common room since. Not that he felt like talking to other students.
Professor Snape came to his seat and told him to go get ready, and then go to the lake for next event. Harry nodded, stood and went to get changed.
Swimming costume, a warm cloak and easily removed shoes, and Harry was ready to go to the lake. He'd decided to wear green shorts, in recognition of his Hogwarts house, and because it went better with his plan. While Harry had learnt the bubble-head charm, he realised it was bit vulnerable, and had a cunning plan, to enter the lake, hide in some weeds, and wait. He didn't have a watch, but he felt that simply sitting there for several hours should do quite well.
Harry, twenty minutes later, fighting for his life against Grindylows, cursed his own lack of preparation. Breaking their fingers did seem to work, however. Bravo Mr Lupin. There did seem to be a quite adequate supply of water demons, and it was a tired and battered Harry Potter that dragged himself out of the water later to be awarded four points. Madam Pomfrey dragged him off to a tent, where she treated his bites, and cuts, then gave him a salve for the bruises.
Granger was lying on a cot, bandaged and looking wet and pale. Harry felt a bit guilty about that. Granger lifted her head off the pillow "Oh Harry, you look quite battered. Viktor partially transfigured himself into a shark and um, bit me a little cutting me free from the seaweed.
"Miss Granger will be fine" said Madam Pomfrey "Fleur Delacour, like you had a bad time with the Grindylows."
"The … The hostages" Harry stuttered stagily. Who says he'd learnt nothing from Professor Quirrell.
"Were brought out by the Mer-people" said Madam Pomfrey. "Nothing a hot towel and pepper-up potion couldn't fix." Harry lay back, feeling fairly content.
The third contest was a maze, start order determined by points. And the organisers told Harry weeks before. There was, definitely a curse for that. The outside of the hedge was readily accessible for experiments.
Harry arrived, entered last, and after two turns, cast a plant withering curse on the inner walls of the maze. It took a lot of effort, and the curse had been in a particularly nasty restricted book, but the bushes of the maze wall barring Harry's way lost their leaves, then turned to dust. Harry cast a bubblehead charm. Ten walls later, he'd avoided many distant obstacles, and could see a fountain in the distance down a green lane. Harry walked along, wand out, senses thrumming.
Just past the fountain was a Sphinx.
Harry cocked his head "You'll let me past If I solve your riddle?" asked Harry.
The sphinx grinned, showing sharp teeth in a twice-human sized head.
"Avada Kedavra" Harry cast and the Sphinx was so much dead meat. The hide looked quite nice. A flaying curse had a nice hide separated from a horse-sized corpse, and Harry shrank and transfigured the hide into a palm-sized stone. The flayed corpse he vanished using a neat little maggot curse ,and the bones would be lost to the bloody Blast-ended Skrewts.
An Acromantula tried to jump at Harry, and died from a green flash. The killing curse was, while a long spell to say, quite easy. Finding enough hatred to power it seemed to be getting easier and easier. The voice in his head seemed to just… becoming Harry's innermost thoughts now.
The cup glittered. Harry walked the long green lane to the cup and cleared his throat "Ahem?"
A pink-haired woman in robes a lot like Harry's appeared. "Now, I'm just going to – " she said, and Harry stunned her, then disillusioned her, and tried her wand. It didn't like Harry much. Still, a spare wand is a spare wand. He stashed the spare wand backward in his left sleeve, where he could get it even if bound, and took a deep breath then grabbed the cup. A strange pull at his navel, as if he'd been caught by a massive invisible hook, and he flew off in a spinning, rainbow of light, to land in a graveyard. Harry took cover behind a gravestone and waited. Someone short and fat arrived in a cloak, holding a conversation with a bundle. Harry's headache, the Quirrell headache came back. Fatso got stunned, and bound in conjured ropes..
The bundle squealed imprecations. Harry walked over, wincing from his headache. A tiny red baby with red eyes glared at Harry "Potter" it hissed.
"Hi Tom" said Harry as lightly as he could. "You still in St Mungos too?" he asked. The baby looked confused, and fumbled with a wand. Harry snatched it, and it felt… quite usable.
"Thanks for the wand Tom" said Harry. Baby Tom crawled over to fatso and cursed "Wormtail, you oaf." Harry watched the baby seize Wormtail's wand and laboriously push up the sleeve, and press the wand to a writhing snake tattoo on his arm, Tom cackled "My followers are coming, Potter, you will die" the baby cackled.
Harry nodded "Tom, just one thing… stupefy." Harry wrapped the stunned baby carefully and tucked it away high up in the hands of a tall statue of the grim reaper, then hid, waiting for…. The cracks of multiple apparations, as person after person apparated in wearing dark cloaks and scary bone-white masks.
Once there were several dozen, Harry cast a bubblehead charm and whipped off the poison gas curse; 'Fumos mortis maxima.'
The death-eaters choked and fell. Harry's breath got tighter and tighter. The curse was practically unsurviveable, even with a bubblehead charm. He kept the spell going till he fell over.
Harry woke up in a white space, wearing a white version of his robes. Not far away, a weird, flayed baby lay, gasping. Harry walked over and looked at it. It did look a lot like a bigger, flayed baby Tom Riddle. Harry poked it, and it caught fire, in a painfully familiar way. Harry was left gasping, his hands throbbing, but the flayed baby had burnt to ash. For some strange reason, his headache had just stopped. Like someone turning off a light. Or, Harry realised, like someone with a Horcrux inside them, losing an alien horcrux. His should be safe enough. Harry waited and… nothing happened, then, with a pain a lot like when he made the Horcrux, the white place faded, and he was left lying gasping in a puddle in the mud of a graveyard. Harry panted, and waited for his shaking limbs to stop hurting. Harry used that Sumerian slicing spell over and over, though the Death Eaters looked like they'd overindulged. The fumes of death curse did that, he'd read. Baby Tom was still in the hands of the angel of death, and this time, Harry put the baby on the ground and touched it.
Using whatever that magical effect was, twice in one day, was, Harry discovered, a bad idea. It hurt so much, he fainted, writhing in the mud.
The white place again, a feeling burning pain all over Harry, then the pain started again, that newly familiar, Horcrux working to save him, yet causing pain.
Harry woke with a strangled gasp flopping about in the mud of the graveyard like a fish on a riverbank. Feeling… liked he'd died twice today. After lying in the wet mud for ages, he shakily got up. He got up and looked for baby Tom. A scorched cloth was all that remained. Harry had missed seeing a black wraith flee the scene, having been temporarily mostly-dead at the time, which was a little unfortunate for Harry really.
Harry wondered what the muggles might make of the dead Death Eaters with slit throats. Nothing good, probably.
"Kreacher?" Harry called out hopefully.
With a pop, the grey, hunched old house elf appeared. "Master?" it croaked.
"Bodies, Kreacher. Many bodies. Keep anything valuable, and get rid of the bodies" croaked Harry, dragging himself through the mud to lean against a tombstone.
Kreacher busied himself.
"Master, This is Mister Malfoy" croaked Kreacher.
"Lucky me" said Harry weakly "Kreacher, get them out of the way before muggles or Aurors find us."
"Kreacher could… pop you somewhere else?" suggested Kreacher.
"Just outside Hogwarts would be good" said Harry. "After the bodies are gone" he finished and lay back tired. He rested his eyes.
Kreacher woke him up, lying against a tree near the Hogwarts gates.
"Well done, Kreacher" said Harry weakly. "Fetch help from Hogwarts, and go home."