It was hard not to cave at the sound of the old man's voice. Moxxie could just tell he was wise - he had a long beard, spectacles, and the gaze of an old owl. How could he not succumb to the man's sheer, ancient power? It wasn't as though Moxxie was not used to following instructions or shutting his trap and carrying on with what he was supposed to be doing - but that was with Millie and Blitzo only.
He processed the man's request for only a second before his strange need to please him and simultaneously solve the situation for everyone else kicked in. Millie was looking at him with wild, questioning eyes. She wasn't sure what'd just happened - was he lying? Was he actually this Harry Potter guy?
She knew Moxx had a strange, particular past that he was always closed off about it, but was this really a part of it? What the hell had she married into? "I'm going to go, Millie," he told her, putting on his brave face. Millie blew up a stray strand of hair from her face, exasperated. Here he went with his goddamn hero complex again.
When would he understand that the majority of his personality was completely incompatible with his need to save the day, his inherent instinct to be the knight in shining armor? Sometimes the instinct worked splendidly, but sometimes he just fell on his ass and ended up humiliated and with a broken coccyx. "But- I- you-" she started, preparing herself to go off on a tangent.
It seemed only Moxxie was aware and intimidated by all the hundreds of sets of eyes on them, staring intently. He wondered what these weird, robed children thought of them. Millie was completely focused on the eruption she was about to have. Loona, meanwhile, had been stooping down and flicked the nearest child she could find on the forehead.
The kid started crying. "Loona, Jesus, don't touch it! We don't know what they are," Blitzo mumbled, waking up, still lying strewn and drowsy on the bench before them. Loona grumbled but pulled away, going back to where the imps were all huddled. Already, a teacher was rushing to the child. Moxxie rubbed at his temples.
"Moxxie!" Millie finally burst. The sound drilled into his skull. "Millie, I need to go, ok? They clearly just want me. I'll tell them to leave us alone, and then we can go." "You didn't sign any contract, either," Blitzo drooled. "Moxx," she huffed. Squaring her hands on her hips. "Mr. Potter!" The twitchy man urged.
"Yeah, yeah, he's going, Adolf," Blitzo picked himself up, falling down again a moment after. "I'll go with him, Millie, don't worry." "Why do you get to go with him?" She asked, narrowing her eyes. "I'm better suited at legal issues." With that, Blitzo grabbed Moxxie by the ear and dragged him to the stage of the Great Hall.
Moxxie looked behind him guiltily to see a very preoccupied and simultaneously pissed Millie. He had to imagine she wasn't too keen on splitting up, either, left alone in this swarm of strange, unknown people. She went closer to Loona and stood right beside her, looking warily around them.
Standing several inches shorter than the rest of the professors and without the tables' added height on which they'd been standing, both Moxxie and Blitzo felt far smaller in the massive room. Again, the thought that they were in a grand, mystic castle came over them. Moxxie looked at the slender, polished sticks all aimed at them. Wands. Hogwarts, School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Being called by a name he hadn't heard in over two decades.
Is this what a life without having accidentally fallen into Hell would have been like? Is this what would've awaited him - strange, robed people, magic, fire-changing goblets and portals? It seemed that life never would've allowed him to escape the craziness, that he had always been doomed to a rollercoaster of insanity.
"Moxx, did you drug the alcohol?" Blitzo muttered to him as they walked, observed like serial killers entering a courtroom. "I was gonna ask you the same thing," he replied under his breath. When they reached the stage, the twitchy man's lip quivered. "Only Mr. Potter." "Sucks for you, porn-stache, I'm his legal advisor, and I have a right to be here." The man was clearly flustered and at his limit. It was obvious he was not used to being spoken to in such a manner.
During the exchange, Moxxie's gaze wandered over to the long table at the end of the hall, where some people, probably the professors or caretakers, were still seated. Most had gone over to the students, surely to comfort them or keep them safe. A creepy-looking man supported on a club-like cane was standing beside the table.
The man had wispy, ginger hair like Chucky and a waxy quality to his skin, scars riddling it left and right as if he had been pulled apart and sewn back together clumsily, some sort of Victorian monster emerged from the dead. The man was scary even by Moxxie's standards, and he was used to seeing all kinds of demons with contorted faces.
A single, glass eye rolled around his head, focusing briefly on Moxxie. His skin crawled. "I-" the twitchy man began. "It's alright, Mr. Crouch. Let him come." The ancient man said in his crooning voice. "Yeah, Mr. Crotch," Blitzo said smugly, following the ancient man as he exited the Hall and floated into a stone hallway. Mr. Crouch's upper lip twitched once again, but he followed the imps and the older man grudgingly.
Five other people followed closely behind, and from the corner of his eye, Moxxie could tell the creepy man was among them. He felt horribly exposed and vulnerable. He wished he had a weapon with him or at least all of his senses - but mostly, he wished he had information.
They had told him the name of the castle they were in, but where was it really? Judging by their accents, they were somewhere in Britain, but it couldn't be the normal world, the mundane human world they were used to infiltrating.
Blitzo didn't like it one bit either, completely flanked by these peculiar people, but he held his head and maintained his composure.
He was silently reassuring Moxxie, who, little by little, felt the confidence of his previous statements being chipped away. They wandered through empty hallways - clearly, the entire student body was concentrated into the Great Hall.
He wondered what Millie and Loona would do now, left utterly alone. He regretted not having pressed to have them both with him, and he wondered how Blitzo could be so calm leaving Loona by herself. He probably wasn't. The crowd stopped by a large, pale stone statue of what appeared to be a griffin. "Strawberry knock-pops," the ancient man uttered serenely.
The statue began to move. Moxxie shared a scared look with Blitzo - was it possible that this group of humans truly had access to magic? Was the magic harnessed by the same primordial forces that moved Hell, or did they have something completely of their own? When Harry had entered Hell, he assumed that the reality of the afterlife was the last secret of the world that he would unlock - but here he was, landed smack in the middle of a fantasy book.
They wound up a set of spiral stairs and entered a mystical, tidy office. It was filled with strange objects, objects Moxxie couldn't even fathom the use for. Inside, three teenagers were scattered, sitting on a beautiful plush couch or standing pensively before a fire. They all started at the odd sight of the imps. "What is the meaning of this?" Exclaimed a frighteningly tall woman behind them, sputtering in a thick, French accent.
She waltzed over to one of the teenagers, a good-looking blonde girl with a frightened expression on her face. "Professor Dumbledore, this… creature cannot possibly be Harry Potter. The Harry Potter," an elderly woman with a tall hat breathed, nearing the ancient, respectable man whose name appeared to be Dumbledore.
Dumbledore wasn't paying much mind to her as he hovered over what appeared to be a fancy sink, staring deep into it. "I'm afraid it is him, Professor McGonagall," he replied simply, his mind elsewhere. Moxxie wondered how his mind could possibly be elsewhere considering the madness of the present situation. Professor McGonagall huffed, exasperated. "He can't be! Just- just look at it!" She signaled in Moxxie's direction. "Why, it's not even human." "We won't take offense at that, Mrs. McGonagall," Blitzo cleared his throat. "But we share the sentiment.
If you would kindly let us go the way we came here, we would really appreciate it." "You cannot go," Mr. Crouch repeated, wringing his hands, "the Goblet of Fire presents a binding legal contract. "Oh yeah? And who exactly represents the magical Goblet in court? I'd gladly take its non-sentient ass to the law," Blitzo countered. "I'm afraid it does not work that way, Mr…?" "Blitzo. The 'o' is silent." "What 'o'?" "Thanks." "This is ridiculous," cut in a man with long, flimsy black hair and eaten yellow teeth.
He, like the French woman, had a thick accent. Probably Scandinavian. "Even if that… thing really is Harry Potter. This is the Triwizard tournament. There is no space for another." Dumbledore now turned and set the full force of his potent stare on Moxxie. "What name do you go by?" He asked calmly.
The room was silent around them. Clearly, the teenagers who had been inside when they entered were the most confused, as they hadn't witnessed the scene in the Great Hall. "Moxxie," he replied, ashamed at the weak crackle in his voice. "Would I be correct in assuming you have a human form, Moxxie?" Dumbledore asked, his kind eyes twinkling.
Moxxie was taken aback. It was clear to him that, out of all the people involved in the situation, this Dumbledore man was the most conscious of all of them - he clearly had knowledge of Hell, of the creatures living in it and, at the very least, a small understanding of their workings. Otherwise, he wouldn't have been able to pose such a question.
All the others watched, utterly perplexed at the scene. It seemed that the more things unfolded, the more unclear the situation appeared, the more questions arose. "Yes," Moxxie said. Staring Dumbledore straight in the eyes.
Despite all the other people in the room, he felt that the exchange between him and Dumbledore was a deeply personal one, as though they had a secret, unsaid understanding between one another. "Would you care to shift into it, now?" Moxxie cleared his throat and shut his eyes.
He was the only one aside from Loona capable of shifting into a human form - it had aroused some suspicion from Millie and Blitzo since he had never expressed his ability to do so the first time they'd seen him do it, and since it was a feat such a small amount of imps possessed, but he merely evaded their questions and answered that he had picked it up somewhere when he was very young. And, of course, he had picked it up when he was very young. He was born a human - and he'd never died.
Slowly, he felt himself melt into what'd once been his actual form, his normalcy, his reality. To other imps and demons, creating a human form was a daunting, sometimes impossible task - they had to shift their features into something that was alive, and they were dead as could be.
For them, it was the creation of something that had, perhaps, never existed, but to Moxxie, it was returning to his real nature, lifting a sort of curse and salvation given to him by the family that had rescued him, and restoring the lividity and oxygen into his limbs. He breathed deep as he felt the change that had begun coming over him.
Sometimes, when he was alone, he shifted back into his human form and stared at himself in a mirror to see how he had grown. It was like looking into an alternate reality and a small peek into what might've been. And yet, despite his initial shock when he had landed in Hell, he had never truly looked back, never truly craved his life as a human.
It had always seemed to him painfully ironic that he had found love and comfort, people who wanted him in Hell of all places and not in the human world. Up here, all he had ever found was rejection, pain, abuse - Hell was a respite from all of that, surprisingly. He had never had a choice on returning to the human world, but if he had had it, he never would've gone back.
The choice only came when he met Blitzo, who had gotten ahold of Stolas' book. But even then, he had never even been slightly tempted: he had Millie, he had his family - what would he have gone back to? There was no one in the human world that missed him or desired him. But who were all these people that needed him so badly now? That sought him out so feverishly?
He was no one, just a neglected orphan that no one looked twice at. And yet, here he was, requested as could be. Maybe he had a schizophrenic episode. A wave of gasps rippled through the humans as the change was completed. A taut silence fell over the room like a humid blanket, all the people staring goggle-eyed at Moxxie in disbelief.
These people were certainly magical, but it was plain to see they'd never witnessed something like this. They all took in Harry's tall figure, from his thin, pale arms to the shaggy, silky black hair. Their eyes all lingered on his forehead. Moxxie was aware of the lightning-shaped scar his human form bore, but could it be possible these people, these completely random, unknown people, knew about it? It seemed unlikely, but then again, the whole situation was unlikely, like it'd been ripped from an action-packed novel.
The silence was broken by an unfamiliar voice belonging to a man Harry hadn't spotted before - the man had been lurking in the dark corners of the office, becoming a shadow himself. "Fascinating," he remarked emotionlessly as he swept into view, his dark robes flowing behind him, the dark, curtain-like hair framing his face unflatteringly revealing equally dark eyes that drank Harry in greedily, almost with ire. He sauntered over to him without the slightest hesitation, whereas all the others had kept a respectful, frightening distance.
The man took Harry's head forcibly and parted his fringe, revealing the scar. The others stood by, shock upon shock falling upon them in layers like a tipsy-topsy cake. "It cannot be," professor McGonagall repeated, a veiny hand over her mouth.
The dark man looked straight into Harry's green eyes, and a powerful emotion set over his face, though Harry couldn't have said what it was. "It is true, then," Mr. Crouch said shakily. "You are Harry Potter." "Professor Dumbledore, we can't possibly allow him to compete. Harry Potter is… well, he's an adult! He cannot partake in a child's contest." "I agree, he must have many unfair advantages over the others.
He is a creature, besides! I do not care for his new look," the French woman shook her head. "Barty," Dumbledore looked severely at the twitchy man. "What do you think?" The man considered, looking hypnotically at the floor, deep in thought. After some time, he finally spoke. "The Goblet of Fire presents a binding legal contract," he repeated for what must've been the umpteenth time, "Harry Potter must compete in the Triwizard Tournament."
A wave of uproar replaced the previous silence, Blitzo among those who complained. "He won't be taking part in anything you crazy assholes are talking about - he didn't even sign any contract." "His name was entered into the Goblet, and he has been chosen.
He does not have a choice." "Whoever entered his name wasn't him! That can't be legal." "I'm afraid there is nothing to be done. If Harry Potter does not compete, the consequences would be… fatal." "Newsflash, nimrod, he's already dead!" "No, I'm not," Moxxie said under his breath, abashed. "What?" Blitzo's head snapped back to Moxxie, fire in his eyes. "I'm not dead, Blitzo." "So we are supposed to compete with an adult?" Interrupted a stocky teenager, also with a thick accent.
He was livid, puffing up his chest beside the other Scandinavian fellow. "This is outrageous," said the gigantic French woman, falling down on the couch and fanning herself with her hand. "Harry," Dumbledore now turned to Harry with the same penetrating gaze as before. "Do you know magic?" "Some," Harry replied. "What?!" Blitzo exclaimed, now completely livid. "If you do not participate, I don't know what may happen to you. These are… unprecedented circumstances.
I thoroughly encourage your cooperation if you do not wish to face dire consequences," Dumbledore told him intimately, staring at him over his half-moon spectacles. Harry swallowed hard. "Professor Dumbledore, if I may," cut in the dark man with the greasy hair. "I would be open to… instructing Mr. Potter. Analyzing his capabilities, perhaps." "Oh, no, you don't get him, Snape," the man with the wild eye suddenly spoke in a gruff voice, somehow managing to say 'Snape' as if it were an insult.
Even Blitzo had to respect the tone and power of the voice. "No one is getting Moxxie, alright? If anything, I own him," Blitzo shouted. "Stop, Blitzo. I think I need to do this," Moxxie said, taking him by the arm. "Are you out of your fucking mind, Moxx?" "It's clear you need some time for deliberation. Mr. Potter, Mr. Blitzo, would you care to discuss this with your other companions?" Dumbledore asked, already settling back to watch the sink. "Yes, I think we do," Blitzo spat, his nostrils flaring.
"Professor McGonagall, I trust the ladies who came with them have been taken to your office?" Professor McGonagall hesitated before replying. "Yes, sir. Would you care to follow me?" She addressed Blitzo and Moxxie and, not waiting for a response, left Dumbledore's office.
They followed after her, leaving a trail of watchful, cautious eyes on them, including the portraits.