Disclaimer: I do not own anything Harry Potter

A/N: There are two swear-words in this chapter. You are warned and they will be the only serious swear-words in this fiction.

Also, I am sorry I have not updated in such a long time. My GPA thanks you for waiting though. This story is completely written now and I just have to type out the rest. There should be a couple more chapters after this.

Chapter 9: Tasks and Challenges

The fae woke up as Harry stepped into the arena for the first task. Her knees buckled as soon as she had form and caught herself with her hands before she did a face-plant. With a deep breath she looked up and saw the scaly black lizard crouched over its egg and glaring at Harry.

"Really? A dragon?!" she crossed her arms and scowled at him. "You know I am getting real tired of your shit Potter." she said.

The boy was frozen in place and hell if she was going to encourage him in this. She shook her head with an exasperated sigh and scanned the audience. She spotted Snape.

"You're useless, you bastard!" she yelled at him, fists clenched and seething. She wanted to go over to him and smack him in his stupidly neutral face as he watched Harry do stupidly dangerous things.

But the boy had summoned his broom so she took a shaky breath instead and hopped onto the back of it. She had to fight a fucking dragon and everyone around her was useless.

At some point she became vaguely aware that she was underwater and wondered why. What was going on?

Harry was swimming.

Swimming.

She hoped that he was having fun and remembered to wear sunscreen...

When she next awoke, she was staring into the eyes of a dead boy. Wide, unseeing eyes; innocence and shock frozen in place by death. She couldn't move from where she lay on the ground or look away as sorrow and failure choked her.

Something happened and she wasn't sure if it was a noise or her own tired mind catching up but she suddenly realized that his eyes were not green. The dead boy in front of her was not her boy.

All her breath left her body in a sob.

Thank you, oh thank you, thank you. She thought, the only thing she could do. To thank whatever had seen fit not to have her wake up staring into Harry's dead eyes and to weep.

Slowly, awareness of her other surroundings bled back into her brain and she pushed herself up off the ground.

She stopped thanking everything.

Harry was tied to the back of a tombstone as Voldemort stood in front of him. The fae tried to bring her fire to bare as she stumbled towards the tombstone. But it did not seem to be burning the enemy; only Harry was grimacing in pain as her only weapon seared through his head.

"...lost my powers and my body." Voldemort was saying, "I tried to kill him. His mother died in an attempt to save him—"

The fae took a step towards Harry and almost fell.

"—and unwittingly provided him with a protection I admit I had not foreseen…"

"Don't…" she rasped as she put herself between them, leaning back against Harry's bound legs.

"… I could not touch him."

The fae looked on with horror as Voldemort raised a single bone-white finger and held it close to Harry's cheek.

"His mother left upon him the traces of her sacrifice…" said Voldemort.

The fae scrunched her eyes closed.

"This was old magic,"

There had to be a way to stop this.

"I should have remembered it, I was foolish to overlook it…"

She could feel Harry trembling behind her. Oh child…

"… but no matter. I can touch him now."

Voldemort placed his finger on the boy's cheek and the fae felt her weapon used against the one it was meant to protect. Harry did not scream through his pain, though she knew that his head felt like it was going to burst.

Voldemort laughed softly and turned away. She could have wept as she climbed to the top of the tombstone and looked at his face.

But she didn't.

Harry was breathing heavily through the cloth they had stuffed into his mouth. He was covered in sweat and she longed to wrap her arms around his neck and cry.

But she couldn't.

Harry wasn't.

No. Though they shook, his breaths were even and controlled. His eyes were focused and taking in everything going on. Ready to fight back at the first chance.

She felt her despair harden into something else as she looked into the bright eyes of the boy that had never been a child. How had she lied to herself all this time? Telling herself that she had cared for him yet bemoaning what she had lost.

Hadn't Lily said anything?

Everything?

There was no moon that night but she would not feel shame anymore regardless. The fae breathed in deeply, smelling smoke and the tang of blood and fear in the air, and set her jaw.

Looking around properly for the first time, she noted the snake circling in the grass as it flicked its tongue at her. She hissed at it and it flinched. It would keep its mouth shut if it knew what was good for it.

Voldemort was telling something to his brood of trained monkeys.

Good.

That bastard hardly needed encouragement from her to yammer on. And she needed time to think. The fae jumped down from the tombstone and walked around in the circle, staying opposite of that blasted snake.

She put her hand out as she walked by each black-robed man, strumming against their dark auras -oh that one was a woman, she would not have been able to tell from the voice alone, and memorizing them. When she had made a full round, she stopped and stared at the pale snake-like man.

Still talking.

The large snake passed behind her and she lifted the corner of her mouth in a snarl. Flashing her sharp teeth. It kept going but for a brief moment she felt something from it.

Something familiar.

Something that she had sensed in Harry and what she felt in front of her. Her brow furrowed as she tapped in the sick blackness around her enemy.

Her eyes widened in realization.

"Well crap." She said.

An understanding of things was forming in her head but she had no time for the horror of it to paralyze her. Voldemort was finishing up story-time as he turned towards Harry once more. He lifted his wand.

"Crucio!"

Harry writhed in pain and the fae snarled, leaping closer to the half-man. She reached out with her magic again but this time not to simply explore. The force of his magic and dark emotion rolled over her and euphoria fought with the desire to retch.

Oh, the things she could do at the reins of this kind of power. The terrible wonderful things.

She inhaled through her clenched teeth and pressed her hand into her stomach.

"There are better ways then to just make him suffer." she said and Voldemort ceased the spell, looking thoughtful. Harry sagged in his ropes.

"They think he is more powerful than you." She said. Voldemort sneered.

"Give him a fair chance." She said and swallowed thickly, "Free him and fight him. Defeat him with a wand in his hand and then they will see."

Voldemort almost nodded.

"You see, I think," he said, "how foolish it was to suppose that this boy could ever be stronger than me…"

He kept talking and the fae's eyelids fluttered as her eyes rolled back into her head.

Such confidence.

And didn't he have the power to back it up? She felt all the muscles in her body beginning to relax.

It was right there in front of her, all she had to do was take it and she would no longer be the smallest of the faeries…

"Now, untie him, Wormtail."Said Voldemort "and give him back his wand."

Her eyes snapped open.

He was going to kill Harry and there was no way she could influence him to do anything else. She broke the connection with Voldemort and stumbled backwards. Slowly she brought her shaking hands to in front of her face and turned them over. The tips of her fingers were now stained with a taint that she knew would not fade.

She clenched them into fists.

There would be no coming back if she ever tried that again.

The rat-man released Harry and took the rag out of his mouth. Harry was on his feet but he was favoring one leg and though his eyes shifted for an escape, he did not run. Wormtail retrieved his wand and shoved it into his hand.

The fae shook her head to clear it and stepped closer to Harry.

"You have been taught how to duel, Harry Potter?" Voldemort asked quietly. The fae saw Harry frantically thinking and watched as the reality of his situation dawned in his eyes.

"Harry, I can't do this for you." Said the fae softly.

"We bow to each other, Harry." Said Voldemort, bending in a mockery of a bow.

"You're a great wizard. Harry." She said. "I am not the first to tell you that and you should believe it."

"Come," said Voldemort, "the niceties must be observed… Dumbledore would like you to show manners…"

"You're better than him, Harry."

"…Bow to death, Harry…"

"Tell him to shove it up his arse."

The Death Eaters were laughing as Voldemort smiled.

Harry did not bow.

"I said, bow." Voldemort raised his wand and forced the boy to bend at the waist. The Death Eaters laughed harder and the fae snarled at them. Voldemort hit Harry with the cruciatus again and the fae dug her finger nails into her palm as she watched him suffer.

He didn't beg though, he didn't make a sound at all. Harry Potter, a fourteen year-old, simply endured the pain and stood back up when it ended. Of course it was no fun to play with a mouse that did not squeal before it was eaten, and Voldemort thought that an imperius would see to that. But Harry would not be forced to even by magic.

"I WON'T!" he screamed, breaking the spell the mad-man had put on him. The fae wanted to clap wildly as the Death Eaters stopped laughing. There was a warmth building up in the fae's chest as she waited for the right moment. The moment when she would jump between the death curse and her boy.

Harry dove out of the way of another cruciatus and hid behind a tombstone. Voldemort slowly walked towards his hiding place and called out taunts. She saw the gleam in his red eyes and knew it was time.

The warmth spread and she smiled ferally and she put herself in place. She could see Harry from where she stood and saw the flinty strength behind the resignation on his face.

"Stay where you are, Harry." She said. "This will be over soon."

She felt quite warm now. She supposed that this was the end.

A/N: Bad place to end, sorry. More to come soon. Please review!