Chapter 51

November 2nd 1994

Hogwarts

Harry was riding on the back of an eagle owl, soaring through the clear blue sky toward an old, ivy-covered house set high on a hillside. Lower and lower they flew, the wind blowing pleasantly in Harry's face, until they reached a dark and broken window in the upper story of the house and entered. Now they were flying along a gloomy passageway, to a room at the very end . . . through the door they went into a dark room whose windows were boarded up. . . .

Harry had left the owl's back . . . he was watching, now, as it fluttered across the room, into a chair with its back to him. . . .

There were two dark shapes on the floor beside the chair . . . both of them were stirring. . . .

One was a huge snake . . . the other was a man . . . a short, balding man, a man with watery eyes and a pointed nose . . . he was wheezing and sobbing on the hearth rug. . . .

"You are in luck, Wormtail," said a cold, high-pitched voice from the depths of the chair in which the owl had landed. "You are very fortunate indeed. Your blunder has not ruined everything. He is dead."

"My Lord!" gasped the man on the floor. "My Lord, I am . . . I am so pleased . . . and so sorry. . . ."

"Nagini," said the cold voice, "you are out of luck. I will not be feeding Wormtail to you, after all . . . but never mind, never mind . . . there is still Micheal Potter. . . ."

The snake hissed. Harry could see its tongue fluttering.

"Now, Wormtail," said the cold voice, "perhaps one more little reminder why I will not tolerate another blunder from you. . . ."

"My Lord . . . no . . . I beg you . . ."

The tip of a wand emerged from around the back of the chair. It was pointing at Wormtail.

"Crucio!" said the cold voice.

Wormtail screamed, screamed as though every nerve in his body were on fire, the screaming filled Harry's ears and made him wince

"Harry! Harry!"

Harry woke up to see Daphne shaking him.

"I'm fine "He reassured her "I was just having a bad nightmare you can go back to bed". All the while wondering to himself what kind of a dream did he just have

SCENE CHANGE
Over the course of the next three weeks everyone at Hogwarts was quite busy.

After Micheal Potter had been sorted into Gryffindor Harry did not see much of him due to them being in different years,houses and Micheal needing to get ready for the First Task.

Also to his disgust he did not see much of Lily and James Potter as they were helping Micheal adjust and prepare for the First Task.

Harry had heard from Krum that in between the First and Second Task there would be about three months or so and he guessed he would be seeing more of the Potters than he was now.

Not that he was complaining about right now.

There had been an explosion in intrest in joining the Archmagi in November with their numbers now hovering around one hundred and fourty members.

In order to handle that large number they had come up with stronger methods of secrecy as well as the fact that all of the members of the Hogwarts Gobstone Club were in the Archmagi.

So they had the idea of having the Hogwarts Gobstone Club meeting location moved from Classroom 22b on the Second Floor to Classroom 7B on the Seventh Floor so that Archmagi Members going to the sessions if pressed about where they where could just say that they were in the Gobstones Club.

And they had to split up into a lot of different sessions and groups with there now being seven groups that the Archmagi had split into.

So Harry pretty much spent every evening in the Room of Requirment now.

The workload with the Archmagi ontop of the workload of Seventh Year was starting to get a bit much though.

Harry already had Edmund,Daphne and Layla helping him out as assistants of sort and he decided to name Anthony Vacca,Bernard Phillips ,Anthony Sulzer,Robert Hynes,Paul Luster and Robert Davison as individual group leaders for each day of the week that they had sessions.

Helped to take the load of him and Edmund a bit.

He let his assistants help run the group and Harry worked on coming up with items that they could continue on since the Archmagi now contained students from all years who had a varying skill set.

It was challenging work but seeing the satisfaction everyone had in learning defensive spells that they never would have learned in their Defense Against the Dark Arts Classes made the time spent worth it for Harry.

SCENE CHANGE

On the Day of the First Task The atmosphere in the school was one of great tension and excitement. Lessons were to stop at midday, giving all the students time to get

down to the Quittich Pitch where the first task would be taking place at.

Harry was interested in seeing what the first task would be.

Krum would not say when he had talked with him earlier.

He was also curious in how Micheal handled whatever they brought in.

Supposedly his brother had been trained by the best for the past few years and now Harry was interested in seeing how much he knew and a bit to compare Micheal to Harry when he was in Fourth Year.

Walking with Daphne and the rest of their group they headed down to the Quittich Pitch and found seats with the other Slytherin Students.

Looking around the stadium Harry saw that there where hundreds and hundreds of students staring down in the Pitch as they brought out a fucking dragon.

Wow

This was going to be interesting.

As a Dragon Animagus himself Harry felt drawn to what was going on down below.

Cedric Diggory was up first going against a Swedish Short-Snout.

He ended up using a transfiguration spell to change a rock into a dog to distract the dragon. Cedric was only partially successful thoughg; the dragon took the bait, and Cedric went for the Golden Egg but halfway through, the dragon turned its attention back to Cedric, and burned his face. Cedric retrieved the egg, however, and passed the task.

The second person up was Fleur Delacour, who faced a Common Welsh Green. She enchanted the dragon to sleep, but while retrieving the golden egg, the dragon snored and let out a jet of flame that set her skirt alight. She was able to extinguish the flames using the Water-Making Spell and retrieved her egg to the disappointment of many.

Viktor Krum was third, facing a Chinese Fireball. He used the Conjunctivitis Curse to blind the dragon and retrieve his egg. However, he got docked points when the dragon stumbled around and smashed half of the real eggs

And then it was finally Micheals turn facing a Hungarian Horntail.

He felt sympathy upon seeing the dragon knowing that a Horntail was a particularly vicious Dragon.

When Micheal entered the arena he seemed to pale a bit upon seeing the Horntail, at the other end of the enclosure, crouched low over her clutch of eggs, her wings half-furled, her evil, yellow eyes upon him, a monstrous, scaly, black lizard, thrashing her spiked tail, leaving yard-long gouge marks in the hard ground.

He also wondered if the crowd that was making a great deal of noise would be a distraction.

Micheal raised his wand and said something that they could not hear.

Curious about what spell had been cast, Harry saw a broom speeding through the air from around the edge of the woods, soaring into the enclosure, and stopping dead in midair beside Micheal seemingly waiting for him to mount.

It looked like a Firebolt.

Well that made sense after all James Potter is a brilliant Quittich Player and it would make sense that he had passed his skills onto his son.

Harry felt Daphne place her hand on his.

Micheal swung his leg over the broom and kicked off from the ground and then dived with the Horntail's head following him;

Micheal seemed to know what it was going to do and pulled out of the dive just in time; a jet of fire had been released exactly where he would have been had he not

swerved away.

"Great Scott, he can fly!" yelled Bagman as the crowd shrieked and gasped. "Are you watching this, Mr. Krum?"

Harry had to agree with Bagman.

Micheal was quite good on a broom.

Micheal soared higher in a circle; the Horntail still following his progress; its head revolving on its long neck

If he kept that up, both of them would become nicely dizzy

Hopefully Micheal knew not to push it too long, or it would be breathing fire again —

Micheal then plummeted just as the Horntail opened its mouth, but this time he was less lucky — he missed the flames, but the tail came whipping up to meet him instead, and as he swerved to the left, one of the long spikes grazed his shoulder, ripping his robes —

But Micheal continued to zoom around the back of the Horntail.

Harry looked at the Horntail

It didn't seem to want to take off, she was too protective of her eggs. Though she writhed and twisted, furling and unfurling her wings and keeping those fearsome yellow eyes on

Micheal, she was afraid to move too far from them .

Harry knew the trick was how to persuade her to do it, or Micheal would never get near them.

Micheal then started to fly, first this way, then the other, not near enough to

make her breathe fire to stave him off, but still posing a sufficient threat to ensure she kept her eyes on him. Her head swayed this way and that, watching him out of those vertical pupils, her fangs bared. . . .

Micheal flew higher. The Horntail's head rose with him, her neck now stretched to its fullest extent, still swaying, like a snake before its charmer. . . .

Micheal rose a few more feet, and she let out a roar of exasperation. He was like a fly to her, a fly she was longing to swat; her tail thrashed again, but he was too high to reach now. . . . She shot fire into the air, which he dodged. . . . Her jaws opened wide. . . .

And then the Horntail reared, spreading her great, black, leathery wings as wide as those of a small airplane — and Micheal dived.

Before the dragon knew what Micheal had done, or where Micheal had disappeared to, Micheal was speeding toward the ground as fast as he could go, toward the eggs now unprotected by her clawed front legs Micheal had taken his hands off his Firebolt and he seized the golden egg —

And then with a huge spurt of speed, Micheal was off, soaring outover the stands, the heavy egg safely under his uninjured arm,

The noise of the crowd intensified, which was screaming and applauding as loudly as the Irish supporters at the World Cup —

"Look at that!" Bagman was yelling. "Will you look at that! Our youngest champion is the quickest to get his egg! Well, this is going to shorten the odds on Mr. Potter!"

Harry saw the dragon keepers rushing forward to subdue the

Horntail, and, over at the entrance to the enclosure, Professor

McGonagall, Professor Moody, and Professor Hagrid hurrying to meet Micheal who flew back over the stands and came in smoothly to land.

Harry and Daphne looked at each other as the applause continued.

"Well your brother is definitly a good flyer, ''Daphne said.

Harry nodded

After a few minutes had passed Micheal came back out of the Medical Tent and the five judges gave their scores.

The first judge Madame Maxime raised her wand in the air and what looked like a long silver ribbon shot out of it which twisted itself into a large figure eight.

Crouch came next and he shot a number nine into the air.

Next was Dumbledore who put up a nine followed by Ludo Bagman who gave a ten.

Finally Karkaroff raised his wand pausing for a moment and then a four shot out of his wand.

"Micheal is tied in first place with Krum now"Daphne observed.

"Yeah,"Harry said.

Dumbledore then announced to the crowd all of the Champions score and that the next task would be held in February.

Everyone then started funneling out of the stadium and back to the castle.

As Harry and Daphne were walking along a passageway and waiting to get out they didint notice as they ran into someone.

Harrys eyes opened wide and the other persons did too.

"Harry"