Here, as promised, is chapter two. Thanks for the nice comments you left and to those that favoured this story. One with it now.
It should only count to three!
It was evening and the traditional Halloween feast was coming to an end. Everybody was excited about the soon to happen choosing of the champions. Once the desserts had vanished from the tables, Dumbledore dimmed the lights so far that only the blue flames of the Goblet of Fire lit the Hall.
"I think the Goblet will soon be ready to show us the results," Dumbledore said and indeed a few seconds after he said that the fire turned red and a piece of parchment was shot into the air from the fire.
"The champion for Durmstrang is Viktor Krum," Dumbledore announced.
The Durmstrang students applauded and Karkaroff loudly proclaimed how he had known that Krum had it in him. Krum walked up to the head table and was directed to the antechamber to wait there. Meanwhile the fire had turned blue again and the audience waited impatiently for the next champion to the chosen. The fire turned red again and the next piece of parchment flew out. Dumbledore caught it.
"The champion for Beauxbatons is Fleur Delacour," He called out and the beautiful girl Harry had noticed before stood up gracefully and walked up to the head table. She followed the path of Krum.
Now the air could have been cut with a knife while the students were waiting for the Hogwarts champion to be announced. The fire turned red again and Dumbledore caught the last piece of parchment.
"The Hogwarts champion is Harry Potter," He said, and the Gryffindor table erupted in cheers and Harry stood up beaming and walking up to the head table. Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw also clapped happily, as Harry was popular in those houses too, except for when they had to play Quidditch against him.
Harry met the other two champions and they waited for the heads of the schools, Bagman and Wintergold, the new head of the Department of International Cooperation, now that Crouch was at Azkaban, to arrive and tell them about the first task. To his immense surprise not the adults, but his little brother Aaron came down, looking pale as a ghost.
"Aaron, what happened?" Harry asked concerned.
"Harry, my, my name, the goblet," Aaron stammered shocked, "I swear I didn't."
"Breathe Aaron," Harry said calmly, trying to sooth his brother's nerves.
He heard the officials arriving and shouting between some people.
"That's a scandal! Hogwarts can't have two champions!" Karkaroff thundered.
"'E is right, Dumblydorr," Madame Maxime added, "'Ad we known that more zen one champion would be chosen, we would 'ave brought a wider selection of students."
Dumbledore strode towards Aaron, only to be blocked by Harry. He gave the older Potter an incredulous look. Harry coldly stared back at all of the adults, making them shiver under his penetrating glare. Many just now really realized that this was Lily Potter's son.
"Aaron is innocent, and you would all realize it, if you only looked upon it after calming down," Harry stated coldly, "The Goblet of Fire is an Ancient artefact that was enchanted to choose one champion from each participating school. And the enchantment only included three schools since the beginning. Hogwarts, Beauxbatons and Durmstrang. The goblet chose those three champions, namely Viktor, Fleur and me. Aaron is a fourth-year student and knows nothing about enchanting, hell, even I wouldn't be able to make the goblet believe that is has to choose a fourth champion and I am the most powerful student that there currently is at Hogwarts. For this to work, the one who did it had to completely overpower the original enchantments, meaning he had to have a fully matured magical core. No student fulfils that requirement. Which also means that asking an older student to set him up as a fourth champion wouldn't work."
This struck all those that had protested before heavily.
"What interests me more is the way how the goblet could have been accessed and the spell placed on it. It was stored at the Ministry before it was brought to Hogwarts just yesterday, as the rules demand. That means either somebody at the Ministry, during the transport or here at Hogwarts must have been the one to tamper with the goblet. Before you start accusing my brother of something he couldn't have done, start looking for the real culprit and the motives behind this incident. And you would do well to find a way to get Aaron out of the Tournament before my letter to my mother reaches our home tomorrow morning, or you will find out just why my father never even tries to argue with her when she is furious," Harry added, making the adults gulp.
"As much as it saddens me, Mr Potter, your brother is bound by the magical contract of the goblet. As soon as a name comes out of the Goblet of Fire, the one is chosen as a champion and has to compete. Those are the rules," Wintergold pointed out timidly, "The only way out would be forfeiting his magic and I am sure nobody wants to go that way."
Harry growled.
"Fine, it's your funeral," Harry declared, "As Aaron was entered against his will, how will you make up for your inability to protect the younger students from being entered in a Tournament that is far above their skill level, headmaster?"
"Now my boy, there is no need to be this hostile," Dumbledore tried to placate Harry, which was exactly the wrong thing to do. Harry had inherited Lily's temper.
"Don't come me with that kind of platitudes, Dumbledore!" Harry roared, "This Tournament has been stopped because there were too many casualties in the past! My brother is just fourteen. He is three years behind the other students in this tournament. And none of you seems to even care about his safety! Bagman is already figuring out how to use Aaron's fame to make this farce more interesting, Wintergold is no doubt happy to have a famous name to take away attention from the Crouch affair that has his department in a bad light. Maxime and Karkaroff, while understandably angry that their schools have one champion less, don't even consider that Aaron is the victim in this. And you will try to use him to lure the one who did this out and will let things run their course without offering any assistance, like in the years previous. Forget it. As heir to House Potter I demand that, for the endangerment of one of my house's members, he will be allowed to call in any tutors to prepare for the Tournament that he needs!" Harry's aura was now showing.
All of the adults were gasping at how much power Harry showed. Never had they thought that a seventeen-year-old boy could have that much power in him. They really didn't want to be on this boy's bad side. And to think that he wasn't at the peak of his power. His mother was already bad enough when she lost her temper. They had the bad feeling that he would be even worse than her, once he reached his magical maturity.
"In the name of the Ministry I will make sure that your brother will get tutors here," Wintergold hastily said.
"I will send word to my parents to choose suitable ones. Nobody but them will have a say in who they choose. I don't trust anybody here at the moment. Nobody besides the teachers or the visiting Ministry officials would have been able to trick the goblet, so in my eyes you are all suspicious right now," Harry stated.
"Good to see that somebody practices constant vigilance," Moody commented nodding appreciatively.
"Moody," Karkaroff sneered, "Thinking up new conspiracy theories, are you?"
"You shut up right now; you are at the top of my list, Karkaroff!" Harry snapped, his green eyes glowing with power, "Don't think I wouldn't know about your past. My godfather is the head auror if you forgot."
Karkaroff shut his mouth at once.
"Now, we will investigate this unfortunate incident, but we still need to inform the champions of the first task," Wintergold said.
Harry stared at the man but realized that for now he wouldn't be able to do anything, so he took some deep breaths to bring his aura under control again. After two minutes the aura receded again, and he only had the glowing eyes left.
"Well, let's start. The first task is at the 24th November and is meant to rest your daring in face of the unknown. You will only be armed with your wand, your courage and your mind. More information will be provided directly before the task," Wintergold explained, shrinking under Harry's glare. That boy was perhaps even scarier than his mother.
Harry led Aaron out not caring for the calls of Dumbledore to stay with him. He had a letter to write so that his mother's wrath would come upon the idiots that called themselves responsible adults.
The next morning Harry strode in front of the entire Great Hall. The reception in Gryffindor Tower had made him see how urgently he needed to set people strait. Dumbledore wouldn't bother, he knew. He cast a sonorus at himself to be heard.
"Alright, listen everybody! I want to clear up some misconceptions about what happened last night, as many people seem to be unable to count to three and find nothing wrong if an ancient artefact that has only ever counted to three suddenly learned to count to four," He said sarcastically, "The Goblet of Fire by itself would never have chosen four champions if not for an adult with a fully mature core tempering with it. Therefore, forget the idiotic notion that Aaron could have cheated his way into the Tournament. I will personally come after everybody who thinks that giving my brother a hard time over being entered in a Tournament that has taken the lives of the participants in the past, when he is three years younger than the regular champions, is a smart thing to do. Aaron is forced to see through the Tournament, even if he doesn't want to, thanks to the contract being binding. He can't back out or he will lose his magic. So, think twice if you really want to be in his place right now. Quietus."
Harry walked back to the Gryffindor table, leaving a stumped student population behind. Harry made a point by ignoring anybody asking stupid questions while he ate breakfast. From the corner of his eye he saw that Dumbledore for some reason didn't seem happy with his display. Well, his problem, not Harry's. He would protect his brother, no matter what others said.
When the students were about to leave to spend their day how they wanted, the doors of the Great Hall flew open and a very furious red-haired woman and an only slightly less scary looking black-haired man with glasses entered the Hall. Harry smirked. This promised to be entertaining.
"Albus Dumbledore!" Lily Potter shouted.
The students saw the headmaster pale a little, probably remembering what she had done to him after Aaron's first year. She had won his wand from him, which, according to rumours, was kept at Potter Manor now.
"Lily and James, how nice to join us, why don't you follow me to my office so that we can discuss the problem?" Dumbledore tried to avoid being embarrassed in front of the whole school.
"Don't talk like you had done nothing wrong!" She yelled back and stomped towards the head table, "How could my fourteen years old son be entered against his will, while you promised to make sure that no underage student could enter the Tournament? It was the only reason the Board of Governors permitted the Tournament to be reinstated."
"Indeed, I am here as a representative of the Board and I am very interested how this could have happened. From my son's letter, I know how despicable you behaved yesterday. Harry entered on his own and I am damn proud that he was chosen as Hogwarts champion, but Aaron should never have been forced to participate and on top of that have everybody scorn him, accuse him falsely and force Harry to lose his temper to protect him," James added.
The students had the impression that those that had been witness to Harry's outburst were gulping thinking about the power he had displayed. And seeing his parents now standing up to Albus Dumbledore, who was believed to be the most powerful wizard in Great Britain, in the middle of the Great Hall at that, they had no doubt where Harry got his power from. They looked from the Potter parents to Dumbledore to Harry, who had somehow got a bowl of popcorn and was happily munching it, watching the scene unfold. Many sweat-dropped at that casual display.
"I assure you, we are investigating how Aaron's name came out of the Goblet, but I think we shouldn't continue with this display in front of the students," Dumbledore again tried to reason.
"Oh, I don't think that your investigation will be enough. We have seen too often over the last few years what you call investigation," Lily mocked, "No, we will have Sirius send a handpicked team. We will get to the bottom of this."
Dumbledore knew that he couldn't divert this in any way. Lily Potter was a force of nature if she wanted to be and it seemed that he had underestimated her oldest son badly. While he had known that the boy was good at school and powerful, he hadn't expected the raw strength he possessed. Harry Potter was probably more powerful than he had been at that age at school. Yesterday had been an eye-opening experience and he was slightly afraid that the boy was so uncontrollable to him. While he didn't fear that he could go dark, Harry was firmly against using the dark arts, he immensely disliked if a powerful wizard wasn't under his control. Now he needed to do damage control. He finally managed to get the two Potter parents to follow him into his office. He was sure that this would develop into a major headache. And using the incident to test Aaron Potter had looked like such a good idea in the beginning.
Harry had taken up the responsibility of training his younger siblings, now more than ever. While Aaron was in the Tournament, Jasmine and Dahlia also could become a target fast. So, he set apart three hours on Monday evening to teach all of them new spells that were useful in defending themselves or, in Aaron's case, to survive the Tournament. First were all those that he knew worked against magical creatures. He had researched the Tournament before entering his name, so he knew that facing one creature or another was always part of it. He just hoped that the creatures wouldn't be too difficult to get past. But with wizarding stupidity there was no telling, especially not with Fudge as Minister and Bagman as Head of Magical Sports. He knew that Aaron would also get trained by their father on the weekends, therefore he would have a chance to get through the event alive and hopefully unharmed.
Harry was also doing his NEWT preparation simultaneously. He knew that this year would be really hard, but it would be the end result that counted. Being Triwizard Champion would look good on his CV, once he applied for a job somewhere. He estimated that he could probably play Quidditch professionally, if he didn't suffer a crippling injury that was, which was rare with magical healing, for at most twenty years. Playing professionally, if you were good, got you a fantastic salary. Normally you were paid about 500 galleons per month that the season was going on. Meaning eight months of the year. And that was for starting players in the lower teams. A starting player of a team like Puddlemere United was said to earn triple of that amount. Without taking bonuses for winning matches, championships and making it into the European League into consideration. That was on top. Now, if you were smart enough to save those salaries, you were set for life. There were examples of others like Bagman though, who was a gambling addict, who had lost most of his earned gold form his time as a beater.
Harry knew that, while the Potters were well-off, they weren't as rich as for example the Malfoys. They would never have to fear poverty, but they couldn't afford throwing their money out of the window like the Malfoys did. For that reason, Harry wanted to have a well-paying job once he had graduated. He had already discussed his plans with his parents. He would accept a lucrative offer for playing Quidditch after graduating and at the same time he would study becoming a healer. He knew that he had the grades and normally Quidditch training only took half of a day. Thus, he could study the other half of the day. His father had a friend at St. Mungo's that was a healer and he had told Harry how healer training worked. It was a lot of self-study combined with learning under an experienced healer. If Harry did the practical parts during the four months that the Quidditch season wasn't going on, he would finish his training after approximately five years instead of the normal three. From there on, he could specialize in a certain area. Harry knew that while playing Quidditch was great, he wouldn't want to do nothing else with his life.
Hence why he had taken Arithmancy and Ancient Runes to prepare for his career path. Additionally, he needed Transfiguration, Charms, Potions, Herbology and Defence Against the Dark Arts. It was a huge workload, but he had managed it. He had got O's in all OWLs except Astronomy and History, where he had scored E and had easily qualified for the seven subjects to take in his NEWTs. He had also dropped Care of Magical Creatures, as, while he liked the subject, it was too much of a workload to continue.
Finally, after the three hours were over, he and his siblings went back to the Gryffindor common room. They would go to their dorms, take a shower and work on a bit of homework.
During the Hogsmeade weekend directly before the first task, Hagrid told Aaron to come to his hut at eleven and to use his invisibility cloak. You see, James had first given the cloak to Harry, but when he had become proficient with disillusionment spells, he had given it to Aaron. That had been in Aaron's second year. With Aaron's tendency to stumble across trouble, Harry insisted that Aaron kept the cloak on his person the whole time. Aaron asked Harry if he should go and Harry encouraged him and told him that he would accompany him disillusioned. While Harry didn't doubt that Hagrid didn't mean Aaron any danger, Hagrid's idea of dangerous was vastly different from anybody else's. Therefore, with silencing spells on them both, on top of Harry's disillusionment charm, they set off to follow Hagrid.
Harry couldn't believe where they followed Hagrid and Madame Maxime. Inside a clearing in the Forbidden Forest were four dragons. He now was sure that the Ministry was completely insane. Nesting mother dragons were known to kill anything that came too close to their eggs. Perhaps this really was a plot to get Aaron killed, but, somehow, he didn't think so. There were easier ways to accomplish that. He could tell that Aaron was scared out of his wits. No wonder, he wasn't sure how to feel about facing a dragon and he had signed up for this voluntarily. Well, at least now he could specify the training.
After ensuring that Aaron wasn't about to throw up as soon as he opened his mouth, Harry sat down with his brother to talk about the possible strategies to get past a dragon. He was just glad that he kept some calming potion stocked up at all times. His mother had drilled into the heads of all her children, plus her husband and his friends, that no matter what, any situation could be solved if you thought about it calmly. And in doubt, a calming potion could achieve that state of mind.
"Alright, the most important part of this is to not go into a blind panic. You will get hurt if you do. For you it is most important to concentrate on doing things the simple way. The spells that work best against a magical creature as powerful as a dragon are too magically draining for you to attempt right now. So, we will go with something you can do. First, if the dragon doesn't see you, it can't aim properly. Therefore, you will need to use the disillusionment charm. It is normally a sixth-year spell, but I'm sure you will be fine. You are already close to mastering it. Next is scent erasing and you have that one mastered. Silencing spell is the same," Harry calmly explained, and Aaron started to calm down, "Now, only not being noticed by the dragon's senses isn't enough. You will need to produce a distraction of some kind. The dragon needs to leave her nest to give you a chance to steal whatever it is they have the dragon protect. You can either go for something appealing to the dragon or something it sees as a threat. But if you go with the threat thing, be prepared for the dragon lashing out around her."
"I hope I can do this. I am scared, Harry. I didn't want to be in this," Aaron said in a low voice.
"I know, little brother, but we will get you through this as best as we can," Harry promised putting an arm around his brother's shoulders.
"How will you tackle the dragon?" Aaron wanted to know.
"Trying to make it go to sleep. There are several ways for that. You know I don't like using violence when I don't need to, and I think it is really bad taste to make a mother fear for the safety of her young. And that all for a stupid event like the Triwizard Tournament," Harry growled.
Aaron nodded, that was typical for his brother. It was the major reason why Harry, with all of his talent and power, had decided to study becoming a healer, instead of going for the position of auror that Aaron was aiming for.