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Edited 2/25/2022: An error that nobody pointed out was fixed.

One Shot

When his head hit the ground, he must have blacked out a little. He spun up from unconsciousness, head swimming and in pain. Harry swallowed a moan and suppressed his instinct to open his eyes – the worst of the Dursleys had a way of staying with a fellow. He could hear …

… a crackling fire, the sloshing of liquid, the soft crunching of a person moving over gravel, the soft hiss of another person breathing …

And curiously enough, there was stone behind him, and his arms were bent around it and ties together. Cold stone. Comparatively thin, or his arms would never have fit, but tall and wide. Where was he?

… Kill the spare …

Harry couldn't help it, he convulsed a little as his last memories brought him the death of a good and admirable young man. Cedric.

He could hear, now, the continuing voice of the evil that had brought him here, the death of all his hopes and the death of everything he wanted. Voldemort was back.

"… have you heard them call this boy my downfall? You all know that on the night I lost my powers and my body, I tried to kill him. His mother died in the attempt to save him — and unwittingly provided him with a protection I admit I had not foreseen – but I killed his parents. His mother left upon him the traces of her sacrifice, old magic, but I have taken it for my own... I can touch him now."

The poke that Harry received on his forehead made Harry's head swim with the memories of this past year. Curiously specific memories …

"The Summoning Spell is going to be one of your main go-to spells for this tournament. Since we haven't even approached it in class, I've put together a lesson plan that will work you up to that skill – we will start with mastering the Switching Spell…"

"Kill the spare!"

"… since you only need to hit one of your targets with your spell, you could conceivably Switch your Firebolt with the air in front of you, but I'm afraid that we don't have the time for you to develop the power with the Switching Spell that would require …"

"Potter Stinks! Draco got that one right …"

"… dragons, like snakes, occasionally have red eyes, and that's because there is no pigment; what you're actually seeing is the blood of the animal in their iris …"

"… a friend would have told how he was going to get his name in the Goblet, but no, you couldn't even do that for me …"

Prof. Flitwick regarded Harry solemnly. "There is no possibility of teaching you enough spells to duel, so if that … scenario … crops up for you, your only hope is to overwhelm your opponent with spell volume. If you never stop casting, you just may be able to survive …"

Harry focused on the real world, regardless of how his head was swimming. Opening his eyes, he saw the gleaming bald head of someone (Voldemort, probably) walking away from him, toward a small crowd of adults in black robes and white masks. Wonderful. I get an audience even here.

The baldy seemed to be speaking, "… and I know your thoughts, my followers, that this boy was supposed to have some miraculous power, some way to overpower me, me, the greatest Wizard that has ever lived. The Wizard that has conquered even Death. But I have taken his power as my own, and I shall prove it by killing him before you, and you shall see that Lord Voldemort shall be victorious over all."

The tall, thin, and cadaverously white figure turned to Harry, and he could now see that his skin was patterned in a suggestion of snake skin, and he had no nose, just two slits. His eyes were gleaming red, and seemed to have an expression of contempt built in to them. "So, have you been taught to duel, young Harry?"

Harry swallowed to generate some moisture in his throat, and his head whirled with the memories that his small dose of unconsciousness had produced – and then they gelled into a future that Harry really wanted to come true. "Not really, but I can still kill you with one spell."

The posturing parody of a human turned to him in surprise. "You think that you can succeed where your parents failed? Where Dumbledore has never been able to triumph? What Dark Magic have you thought to cast against me, child?"

Harry was still rather securely tied to a gravestone, but he tried to shrug anyway – not succeeding very well. "No Dark Magic, just the regular spells taught in school." Is he going to buy it?

The resurrected Lord Voldemort looked around at his followers, encouraging them to express their amazement at Harry's claim, "You believe that you can fell an immortal Lord with one spell, one common schoolboy spell?" Voldemort was clearly a drama queen, playing for the crowd, and it was clearly working.

The crowd behind Voldemort began to laugh, hoot, and cause a general sound of derision. Harry gathered his breath to pitch his voice over them. "Yes." His flat claim made Voldemort whirl around to face him.

"Well, then, let us see if this pitiful little upstart can even cast a spell, let alone hit what he aims at." Voldemort narrowed his frightening eyes, and said, less loudly, "He seems to be thinking of fountains of blood. Well, won't this be delightful! Yes, let us see which one of us erupts into blood spray. Peter, if you would be so kind as to release the whelp …" he gestured to the smaller, rotund figure in a hooded cloak. The servant scuttled to Harry's side and slashed at the ropes that held him bound, and then threw Harry's wand about four feet in front of him. Pettigrew then retreated to the mass of Death Eaters before Harry could lunge at him.

Harry slowly pulled his arms and legs free of the constraining ropes, and tried to retrieve his wand. He nearly face-planted into the sod. The Death Eaters erupted into laughter at the uncoordinated figure he presented.

"Now, now, let us watch to see just how badly this little boy fails before we mock him, the little half-blood upstart."

Harry swayed to his feet, looked briefly at his tormentor, and then whispered an incantation. A small, feeble, little spell wobbled its way toward Voldemort … although it was visibly going to be about 8 feet too high to connect with any target. The entire audience of Death Eaters were smugly watching as the little jet of white magic suddenly flattened out and embraced the air, an absent figure in the midst of the spell, as Voldemort abruptly collapsed.

Blood fountained down from the sky over the prone form of the temporarily resurrected Dark Lord.

His coterie, as one, fell to their knees and grasped their left arms audibly groaning. Harry took the opportunity to send a cutting spell in a wide arc into the mass of Death Eaters. Before it had made contact with them, another off-white jet of magic was sent up and over the mob. They failed to appreciate his spellcasting as they, too, collapsed and their blood fountained down from the sky, spilling over their prone figures.

Harry wearily looked over the mass of downed men, looking for signs of a survivor. He saw none. He turned to trudge over to where lay the body of Cedric, next to the Cup laying on its side.

He turned to regard the body of Cedric Diggory. While he didn't interact with Cedric very much – almost never aside from the few times this year – he felt unutterably weary that this young man, who nobody had a reason to criticize, would pay such a final price for being accidentally in Harry's company. Well, let's go home.

Harry put his hand on the Cedric's chest, and then summoned the cup and caught it in his left hand. The portkey activated as he had hoped, and they went spinning away into the approaching night.