Usual disclaimers, no rights to any characters portrayed and this is neither the real world nor a Disney Princess tale.
Harry and the four girls who had been the hostages all slept around the clock. They understood Harry's exhaustion easily enough after the girls looked into the memories of what he had done under the lake (they had discovered that a side effect of their bond was that it allowed them to look into the minds of any in the bond if they pushed enough, even if they were unconscious), because they discovered just how much magical energy he had expended blasting everyone in the Merpeople's village away, far past the bounds of the village. In effect that had required the rapid displacement of a couple of cubic kilometres of water, which took an incredible amount of energy, and blasting apart those Mermen and getting them all out of the lake had used up a lot of energy too.
They couldn't work out why the girls were so drained though, not until they looked into Hermione and Gabrielle's memories and questioned Abbott and Lestrange. That was when they discovered that they had underestimated just how far these people would go. The spells that had been cast over the girls weren't stasis spells, not primarily anyway, the primary purpose of those spells had been to drain their magic away until they died.
They had extracted the truth from Abbott and Lestrange, that they only had those counter-spells in case the other two girls were recovered before they died, and therefore they needed to cancel the spells to avoid too many questions. The plan had been to blame whoever died on Harry and his supporters, and what had happened to any who lived on something that Harry did. The usage and intent of these spells was quite enough to sentence Abbott, Lestrange and anyone else involved to death under the laws that Minerva had told Karkaroff and everyone else in the Great Hall about, because while they'd try to argue that that didn't apply to Gabrielle, the fact that she was betrothed to Harry was enough to ensure that it did.
The same applied to anyone who had been involved in the kidnapping of Hermione and Gabrielle by those house elves, and giving those instructions to the Merpeople as well, because the Merpeople had been instructed to kill Hermione and Gabi, but not until after the ones who came to rescue them had arrived, and that they were to kill all of them because their rescuers were convicted criminals as well. Harry obviously came under the laws Minerva mentioned, and Fleur qualified just as Gabi did.
By the time they woke, Amelia and Kingsley had arrested all of the ones in the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures' Beasts Division who the Merpeople's Chieftainess had identified as the ones who gave her the instructions, and Fudge's Senior Undersecretary, Marcus Somerset, as well, because Abbott and the ones arrested in the Beasts Division had all testified that their orders had come from him.
Somerset had had a long career in the Ministry, and he had headed up the Beasts Division before he took over the Department for International Magical Co-operation from Crouch. When this was put together with Minerva's comments about Somerset telling Fudge what to say when they forced her to accept that Hogwarts would be participating in the Triwizard Tournament, and that it would be hosted at Hogwarts, Somerset's involvement here identified him as a major player in whatever was going on behind the scenes, so he was a bigger prize than the rest of them put together.
Marcus Flint's father had also been arrested as a result of what they got out of Martin Abbott, because he had been an active participant in their plan to use the Tournament to remove Harry as a thorn in the side of the people who were behind Fudge and the traditionalist factions. Marcus had been questioned as well and he had already confirmed his involvement, but he hadn't been arrested as yet. This was only because they wanted him alive for the trials and they knew that he would die if they expelled and arrested him before the Tournament finished.
Rufus Scrimgeour was another one who had been arrested for his part in this, he had been angry about losing his position and status and wanted to get back at them. Possibly the only good aspect of this was that as soon as he was in custody, they managed to get Arthur assigned as Ginny's guardian and he placed her with the mind healers at St Mungo's, so she was finally getting help for her problems. There was another side benefit in this actually, as people who knew the story were impressed that Arthur would take responsibility for the child that his ex-wife had borne to another man when she cuckolded him, just so that he could get the girl the help she needed.
These investigations went on for several weeks, with the Ministers for Britain and France constantly demanding that the charges against Abbott, Lestrange, Somerset and the others be dropped and that they be released. The Aurors of both Britain and France managed to use the confessions that they'd already gotten out of them and the fact that it was an on-going investigation to ignore these demands and keep all of them hidden away though.
As the previous head of France's equivalent of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, Louis Delacour had their Aurors on his side, but even though Nicholas Flamel had formally allocated the voting proxies for the original Noblesse Ancienne House of Flamel to Louis in the French equivalent of the Wizengamot, due to the prevalent anti-Veela sentiment Louis didn't have enough support to effectively oppose their Ministre de la Magie there. That was why they were handling this case in Britain, using the arguments that most of the crimes had been committed in Britain as justification to keep it where they pretty much had control of the Wizengamot.
While all of this was going on, the Tournament was continuing, with Krakov and Bagman now in charge of planning and implementing the third task. The Wizengamot had voted in a new Head for the British Department or International Magical Co-operation (and voted Arthur in as the new Senior Undersecretary to the Minister for Magic as well), but the French Ministry of Magic were still insisting that Lestrange would be returning to his post, and only Abbott, Lestrange and Krakov were recognised by the Goblet of Fire as the organisers for the tournament anyway, so there was no way of putting anyone else in charge of that.
Amelia, along with Minerva and Madame Maxime, demanded that they remove the XXXXX creatures that had been planned for the third task. Karkaroff supported the two Headmistresses's demands in an attempt to curry favour with them. Krakov and Bagman tried to argue that the plans couldn't be changed, until Amelia reminded them that Abbott and Lestrange had obviously changed the plans for the second task, and told them that the maze would be tested before the Champions entered it.
She promised them that if there was a single XXXXX creature discovered in there, they would be sent into the maze in front of the Champions. Faced with this prospect, they promptly replaced the Manticore, Chimera and Acromantulas that had been planned with a Griffin, Sphinx and Mountain Trolls. This reminded Amelia and Minerva that they needed to do something about that Acromantula colony in the forbidden forest that Hagrid had told them about after St Mungo's removed the memory charms and compulsions from him. They didn't know what Dumbledore's reasoning had been for allowing the colony to remain there, right next the school and its students, but they were in agreement that there was no justification for doing so any more.
Dumbledore's intentions had obviously been questionable, even more so after Hagrid revealed that it was actually Dumbledore who had brought in Mosag, because there would have been no colony if Dumbledore hadn't supplied a mate for Aragog. Hagrid had always believed that it was he who had found Mosag and took her to Aragog, but when the memory charms had been removed from him, he remembered that it had in fact been Dumbledore who had acquired her, and then told Hagrid to ensure that she was mated to Aragog.
As Aragog had been a pet and then friend of Hagrid's for fifty years, they decided that it was only fair to give him the chance to try and talk Aragog into leaving. If Aragog and his mate agreed to take all of their progeny and leave, they'd ship them off to some remote island where they could live in peace, making it unplottable and putting Muggle repellent wards around it to keep people away.
None of them, not even Hagrid, really believed that he had any hope of achieving this, but they all agreed that they owed him the chance to try. If he failed to convince them (as they expected), or if the Acromantulas tried to harm him, every Acromantula and every egg in that colony would be destroyed.
Hagrid was shaken when he returned from the attempt to convince Aragog to take his children and leave, because it had been very touch and go whether he would be allowed to leave. With that news and the expected answer, they put their plans into action. Amelia and Gringott had teams of witches, wizards, goblins and Olog-hai (The goblins hired out their security trolls to the wizarding kind, but the Olog-hai were a secret that was generally kept to the Goblin Nation, they were strong, agile, fierce, and cunning, far more intelligent and dangerous than other trolls.) ready to go in, but they would primarily to be there to deal with whatever might escape the nest, or wasn't inside when they struck.
The actual attack on the colony was to be carried out by Harry, Hermione and Fleur (as the three most powerful in their family and with the strongest links to boot), with the other girls and their familiars feeding magic to them over their links if they needed it. After Harry acquired the Elder Wand, they had done testing with this and had discovered that the three of them working together could generate almost as much power as all seven of them together, and the Elder Wand could not handle much more than this anyway (after the massive boosts in magical energy that they had received in Fleur's bonding ritual, with the three of them multiplying each other's power as Harry and Hermione had observed that they could, they were the equivalent of at least seventy to a hundred powerful witches or wizards working together). Adding the others in did not boost the power by anywhere near as much, so there was no valid reason to put the rest of them at risk. As long as they (and the familiars) were nearby though, they could all feed magical energy to the three over their links when they needed it, and there was a good chance that they would need that, because doing this drained them very quickly.
They were using Fiendfyre to scour every trace of the Acromantulas from their nest, and as soon as the forces were in place around the nest (and around the three of them), Harry cast the Fiendfyre into the nearest entrance. More than a few of the Acromantulas were blasted out of the other entrances to the nest by the Fiendfyre and the others arrayed about the nest had to finish them off, because Harry, Hermione and Fleur were struggling to keep the Fiendfyre contained within the nest. The fire scoured out every tunnel and every chamber inside the nest, and evaporated the soil and rocks around them as well, so that over the nearly fifteen minutes they held the Fiendfyre before they banished it (to ensure that every trace of the Acromantulas was gone), the surface above the nest became a deep depression as the earth settled to fill the voids that had been created.
Once they had banished the Fiendfyre and confirmed that it was finished, the three of them collapsed, as did the others, and they all spent most of the next couple days unconscious, recovering from their magical exhaustion. Hogwarts was the best place they could be for this, because Hogwarts was built on top of the intersection of a number of ley lines, so magic was always being fed into the castle. Hogwarts herself channelled more of this magical energy into their chambers in the Tower to aid their recovery.
As well as replenishing their own magic, they were pushing magic to their familiars to replenish what they had given up to their humans, because their familiars did not have the capability of replenishing the magic that they held in them. Even with Hogwarts' assistance though, it took most of them nearly two weeks to get back up to the level they were at before they wiped out the Acromantula colony, but they were functioning OK after a few days, and stretching themselves that much had increased their capacity, just as it had the other times.
Somerset had made one very interesting slip when he was being questioned, he'd used the words 'Minister' and 'her' to refer to the same person. He was a little woozy at the time because those questioning him had decided to try the good old Muggle questioning technique of beating it out of him. Perhaps it was because it was unexpected, but for whatever reason, that seemed to have worked. First he'd said. "You're nothing but Blood-traitors and Mud-bloods! Pathetic creatures like you will never be capable of besting the Minister!"
But when they asked for clarification. "You mean Minister Fudge?" in hope that they finally had something to pin on Fudge, he'd snorted. "That fool? He's just in there to keep the seat warm until her plans get the point where she's ready to come back!"
Those questioning Somerset had been the same ones who had lost two of the three who knew anything about the supposed Death Eater attack at the World Cup because they'd taken oaths of secrecy on their life and magic. They had changed their tack after that, using legilimency to probe the actual Death Eater's mind while asking him general questions to mask what they were doing. As a result of what they got out of the Death Eater's head that way, they had managed to arrest what were hopefully the remaining Death Eaters and Voldemort supporters in Britain and put them on trial. It had been satisfying to see most of them go through the Veil of Death for what they confessed to under Veritaserum.
They did get something else out of their time with the Death Eater, as they pulled apart the magic associated with the dark mark that the Death Eaters bore, and used what they learned from this to create something that could track and monitor prisoners, and suppress their magic. This magic was permanently anchored into a large red 'A' (for Azkaban, obviously) on their wand arms, and this mark was put on anyone who was in there for anything serious enough to merit sentences of five years or more, plus any others who were deemed sufficiently questionable.
Ted had researched the legal aspects of this, and he found old laws which stated that the Director of the DMLE had the authority and responsibility to ensure that they knew where prisoners were, and what they were doing at all times. This meant that Amelia had the authority to do this without referring to Fudge or the Wizengamot and as they locked down knowledge of them with anyone involved, no-one had found about the 'Red Letter's over a year later. They had tested the Red Letters by taking prisoners out of Azkaban (under guard of course), and the Improper Use of Magic Office was able to track them and determine what they were doing the whole time.
As what Somerset was saying was very similar to comments that the Death Eater had come out with when he was talking, they immediately backed off on the nature of the questioning so they could bring in their best Legilimens to probe his thoughts, because they did not want to lose what they were sure would be in his head. This paid off, because they managed to get the name of the person he was working for, and a whole lot more, out of his head without that oath of secrecy killing him. After the hint he had given them while he was woozy after a beating though, it was no great surprise to hear that the person behind all of this was in fact the previous Minister for Magic, Millicent Bagnold.
Apparently Bagnold had decided that the events in the wake of the First Wizarding War had created an environment that would not allow her to create the legacy that she desired for herself, and that Dumbledore had gained too much status out of the notoriety he had garnered from his part in the war as well. For this reason, she 'retired' in nineteen ninety and set it up to ensure that Fudge, a complete idiot, would take over from her as Minister.
This left her free to work behind the scenes and set everything up to eliminate all resistance to her plans for complete control of Magical Britain so that when the time came, she could make her triumphant return, have Fudge and hopefully Dumbledore executed for their criminal failures of Magical Britain and then take up the reins again, ready to lead Magical Britain into a new age of prosperity.
Her plan was all the more chilling because unless they managed to stop her, she had a good chance of pulling it off. While they had learned a good deal about her plans from Somerset though, they had nothing that could be used as evidence until she actually did something that they could catch her at.
The third task was different this time, because thanks to Harry and Hermione's memories, Minerva had had her arguments prepared when the nature of the tasks came out and Abbott told her that Quidditch was being cancelled for the year at Hogwarts, and that the Quidditch pitch was being used for the third task.
Abbott and Lestrange couldn't think of any valid arguments when Minerva had proposed that an inter-school Quidditch competition be run as a secondary competition for the Tournament that involved more than just the Champions in place of Hogwarts' internal Quidditch Cup. She pointed out that cancelling all sporting interests at the school for the year, to be replaced with just three events that only four students would be able to participate in would have a detrimental effect on students' moral, and the other Heads of School, Krakov and Bagman agreed with her.
Given that their young Quidditch star had been the primary driver for Bulgaria's involvement, Krakov and Karkaroff had jumped at the idea, and Madame Maxime had supported her as well, because she was angry about the risk that the officials had put her student in by intentionally not telling any of the school heads about it until after the students were committed. Bagman was never going to argue against including Quidditch, so it was five against two, and Abbott and Lestrange had had no choice but to buckle.
With the agreement to continue, they had made up a Hogwarts school team out of the existing house teams to compete against the teams that were made up out of the delegations from the other two schools. When it was pointed out that they needed a fourth team, Minerva suggested that 'Harry's team (as it had been agreed that one of the champions had to play on each of the four teams) could be made up from the leftovers of all three schools so as to prevent it being a second Hogwarts team.
'Harry's team was therefore made up of three from Hogwarts, two from Beauxbatons and two from Durmstrang. They weren't expected to have a chance against the other teams, because Harry didn't play Quidditch in this cycle and the other three teams were supposedly made up of the best picks from their schools. Furthermore, Harry was the only boy on 'his' team. That was the beauty of it though, because at Beauxbatons and Durmstrang, girls who wanted to play Quidditch had generally been ignored, no matter how talented they were, so 'his' team had him, a star seeker in the last cycle, and six girls who were very talented and driven to show up those who had rejected them.
Four of them had very little experience, but that could be addressed with practice to a degree, and they had Harry, Angie and Katie who knew the game well in the most active roles. Angie was made the captain of their team, and she intended to prove to Flint how much of a mistake he'd made by sneering at her and Katie when he chose the Slytherin chasers over them, though he had selected Fred and George as his beaters.
The fact that Fred and George wouldn't attack Harry or their girlfriends meant that the Hogwarts team didn't have a chance against them, and the professional referee who was brought in for these matches penalised the Hogwarts team when Flint got frustrated and tried to use the usual Slytherin tactics. They wouldn't go hard against Fleur, but the captain of the Beauxbatons team had basically told her to stay out of the way of the real players, and their Beauxbatons girls had a point to make to him, so they went down as well. Gloves were off with the Durmstrang team, and their Durmstrang girls had a similar message for their schoolmates, they got pounded.
What this all added up to was that their 'joke' team (they were called the Witches team rather than the Rowan team by most because the full name of the school Harry had been entered into the Tournament under had gotten around quickly) won the Quidditch part of the Tournament easily, and as both the Durmstrang and Hogwarts teams were all male, Fleur had had little trouble unbalancing them by turning up her allure at key moments, so Beauxbatons came in well ahead of them as well.
Even Hermione, basically anti-Quidditch as she was, had had to admit that having a Quidditch competition running along with the Tournament made things a lot more interesting for most of the students than it had been in the last cycle. They held a match each month, weather permitting, which meant that each team played once every two months and they faced every other team once, with the winners being decided by their overall points at the end of the competition.
In fact, the Quidditch portion of the Tournament went so well and had brought the students together in friendly rivalry so much that they were discussing making it into a yearly event between Hogwarts, Beauxbatons and Durmstrang. They proposed one change to make it more fair with the three schools competing, they each faced the other two teams twice so that every team got to have the home pitch advantage when playing the other teams.
Having a Quidditch competition as part of the Tournament of course meant that the Quidditch pitch could not be ripped up to create the maze for the third task, and the officials couldn't think of any valid argument when Minerva asked why they couldn't just use the arena that was being created for the first task, so it was agreed that that would be the setting for the third task. This had been agreed early enough for both uses to be catered for when it was made.
She had enjoyed twisting the knife a little. "Also, this way the maze can be created without everyone seeing what it is. After all, the Quidditch pitch is in full view of the students most of the time, and I'm sure that you wouldn't want to give any of the Champions the opportunity to memorise the layout of the maze and gain an unfair advantage in the third task, now would you Mister Abbott?"
Abbot had obviously wanted to respond to that, but it had already been decided that Quidditch was staying, whether he liked it or not, so he gave up on a losing battle.
That was why all the spectators headed into the Forbidden Forest again for the third task, instead of to the Quidditch pitch as they had last cycle. This time, the entire arena was filled with a maze that was made up of fourteen to fifteen foot high hedges, and the stands had been raised high enough to allow the spectators to look down into the maze. This had been done on the basis of another suggestion of Minerva's, as she'd pointed out how uninspiring the first two tasks had been for the spectators, and how lowering the hedges and raising the stands would allow them to see what was going on in the task.
Krakov and Bagman couldn't argue with that, and though Karkaroff brought up the fact that it was Harry who had taken the spectacle out of the first task everyone had to agree that there had been nothing for spectators in the idea of the second task being held on the bottom of Black Lake, and Madame Maxime added a dig that Monsieur Potter did provided a spectacle there by way of getting Abbott and Lestrange arrested and his altercation with the Merpeople.
Even though Harry was the only one who had performed any significant magic in the second task, Krum and Flint were still ahead on points going into the third task, because Krakov, Bagman and Karkaroff had inflated their scores, while giving Harry and Fleur scandalously low scores. This meant that they were entering the maze before Harry and Fleur. Harry and Fleur didn't mind this though, as it meant that Krum and Flint should run into the creatures and other obstacles first.
For that matter, them going into the maze pretty much together made it easier for them to stay together and watch out for each other. After all, their only priorities for the Tournament were to meet the requirements to compete in all tasks and avoid getting hurt, so they didn't care if the other side had twisted the facts to have their boys win.
There was also the fact that, even with Voldemort and most at least of his Death Eaters gone , there were still too many similarities to the way Tournament had gone in the last cycle. That in turn meant that there was still a possibility that the first idiot to grab the cup that they had to pick up to win the Tournament could be whisked away to be used in some dark ritual, and neither Harry or Fleur had any intention of being that person.
They weren't too worried about running into the XXXX creatures in the maze, as they'd both come up against these creatures in training. Nor were they worried about the obstacles, as Krakov and Bagman would have been under orders not to put outright lethal traps in there, because Krum and Flint were supposed to survive (the Ministry didn't know that Flint was already under a pending death sentence).
Besides which, both Harry and Fleur had had the power of five or six powerful witches or wizards since the bonding ritual, and so could handle pretty much anything that came at them. They couldn't work as one as well as they could when Hermione was with them, because while she only had the power of three or four powerful witches or wizards, Hermione was the main factor to the bond that let them do this. This wasn't a major issue though, because individually they had the power to do what they had to.
They were over ten minutes into the maze when they encountered the first of the creatures, and it was in a bad way. Whoever it was who had run into the Griffin (their bet was on Flint) had thrown a number of terror boosted cutting curses at it and then ran away. Harry and Fleur healed it enough to save its life, and then called for assistance. Harry called the Potter elves from Tiroedd y Frân (the Potter Estate, under its original name of Crow Lands) and told them to take the Griffin there and look after it. Luckily the way that the magic of the maze had been set up meant that the moving obstacles would vanish whatever couldn't protect itself with magic, so the disappearance of the Griffin's carcass wouldn't raise too many questions. They couldn't work out the reason for this at first, but they did when they got further into the maze.
It appeared that the obstacles in the maze were set to increase after Krum and Flint had gone through, because after they left where they found the Griffin, they seemed to encounter an obstacle around every second of third corner, and they didn't believe that the other two could have conquered most of them. Both potions and charms based obstacles were used, the potions based ones were either burnt away or sucked into conjured containers, while they disabled the charms based ones. Luckily, Krakov and Bagman obviously didn't trust Krum and Flint not to get turned around and stumble back into the obstacles that they were supposed to have passed, so the ones that Harry and Fleur dealt with still weren't immediately lethal.
The next creature that they ran into was the Sphinx, and she was in fine form because she was miffed that the last one who had encountered her had chosen to run away rather than tackle her riddle. Harry and Fleur got her message and chose to attempt her riddle. With Hermione, Millie and Daphne in their heads giving them advice, it didn't take long to solve her riddle, but rather than pass when she gave them leave, Harry had a question for her.
She was taken aback when Harry asked her. "Do you really want to go back and be under the control of the people who had so little respect for you that they sent you here to fill in for this contest at the last minute?" Her ire was even greater when she found out that the only reason she was here at all was that the XXXXX creatures which had been originally planned had been vetoed by the Headmistresses, the Durmstrang Headmaster and the Bulgarian official. The Sphinx was suitably pissed off by this news, and answered with a very firm. "No!" when Harry asked her again. She readily agreed to Harry's proposal to remove her to a safe place, especially when he told her that they could get her back to Egypt later if that was what she wanted. With that agreed, he called for the Potter elves again and they popped her off to Tiroedd y Frân.
Things got rather more serious after that, because they found that it was more than charms based obstacles that had been added to the maze once Krum and Flint went through, as they were suddenly facing Dementors! At first sight, Harry thought it was the Boggart that he had encountered in the maze last time, but only for a few seconds, because he soon realised that he was actually feeling the effects of a real Dementor.
The Elder Wand was in his hand before he knew it, and seconds later the maze was reverberating with the unearthly cacophony of screams that come from a dying Dementor. They had Hermione and the others immediately demanding to know what had happened and whether they were alright, which Harry and Fleur hastened to assure them that they were.
Hermione's insatiable thirst for knowledge had her peppering them with questions about how they had killed something that was supposed to be indestructible, until they reminded her that they were still in the maze with the rest of the obstacles and traps. They could almost hear her blush over the link as she apologised and admonished them to stay safe.
Fleur dealt with the next Dementor using Veela fireballs, the kind that only a powerful Elder Veela such as her and her grandmother could generate. They alternated or worked side by side to eliminate the rest of the Dementors, because there were thirteen or fourteen all up in the maze. In between the attacks they discussed the Dementors being here and realised that this was the reason for those charms to vanish anything without magic, they were to get rid of their bodies if they managed to get caught with a Dementor's Kiss, because that would have been proof that someone at the Ministry had sent Dementors into the maze at Hogwarts when they were supposed to be kept at Azkaban, and they couldn't have anyone finding that out.
They dealt with another seven or eight obstacles before they started running into the Trolls, and they were both so exhausted by then that even Hermione didn't complain when they just killed them as quickly and cleanly as they could. One of the Trolls was covered in blood, and its lack of injuries said that that blood hadn't come from another Troll.
About five minutes after they dealt with that Troll, they found where the blood had come from, Flint. Harry sent up red sparks to call help into the maze. Professors Flitwick and Hardy arrived straight away, but they were stopped by sight of the state of Flint's corpse, as it was mainly the fact that he was the only one of that size and build in the maze that made it possible to identify him.
Just then, the light show went off to signal that someone had won by taking the Triwizard Cup and the Tournament was over, but at the same time the alarms went off to warn of an unauthorised port key activation. If only took them a few minutes to get to where the cup was supposed to be and confirm that neither Krum nor the cup were there. The Aurors were already there, checking the area and in particular the spot where the cup had been, trying to discover where it and the boy holding it had been taken to.
Amelia and Kingsley had enough faith in Harry that when he told them to check the graveyard at Little Hangleton, Kingsley immediately took a squad of Aurors there without asking any questions. That was how they got there before Krum had been sacrificed or killed. Krum was taken straight to St Mungo's for treatment, and everyone else they found in the graveyard was taken into custody.
Of course, the big question was whether the ones who tried to use Krum in a ritual were real wannabe Death Eaters (they were all in full Death Eater regalia), or this was another attempt at misdirection by Bagnold, setting up a new batch of fools to take the blame for whatever happened. After losing useful sources of information recently due to those secrecy oaths, the DMLE went slower than they would have liked to with their questioning, but they had to accept that as the price of getting as much as they could out of them.
As he had reached the Triwizard Cup first, Krum was proclaimed the winner of the Triwizard Tournament, so the Bulgarians got their wish to be able to use him for more publicity.
The fact that another Champion was killed in the very first run of the new supposedly safer version of the Tournament got a new resolution passed in the ICW to reinstate the ban on the Tournament, and that ban was made permanent this time!
The Heads of Schools' proposal to start an on-going Inter-School Quidditch Tournament was supported by the ICW's Sports Committee though, and it was agreed that the three school model as it was structured made for a fair and interesting competition. The Committee did propose an extension to this that they all agreed to, this being that if other schools wanted to compete, the three school model could be repeated as many times as required. The winners of each group of three would then compete against one another to determine the overall Winner of the Inter-School Quidditch Tournament at the end of the season each year.
Having to pay the penalties for losing the Griffin, the Sphinx and all the Trolls in the maze cost the Ministry quite a bit, and these costs were used to slap Fudge around for failing to get prior Wizengamot approval for such a costly and ultimately wasted exercise, because his people had made such a mess of it that it had harmed the reputation of Magical Britain more than it had helped. When he tried to ask for penalties from Harry and Fleur for destroying Ministry property, in the form of the Dementors that they had destroyed in the maze, he was shot down rather viciously by the Wizengamot.
Fudge even had people who had been in his camp joining in and demanding to know what any Dementors had been doing in that maze, let alone so many? They also asked why the Dementors only seemed to have been introduced after the first Champions had gone through, as if they were specifically targeting the Head of multiple British Noble and Most Ancient Houses, and the daughter and heir of the Deputy Minister of Magic for France?
He only got out of that in one piece because there was no trail leading back to him in regard to anything that had gone on in the Tournament, but a number of traditional Pureblood houses used that as an excuse to change ships before they could be dragged down with the Minister for Magic when he sank, because they could see that he was starting to founder.
The Tournament had impacted on their studies a fair bit this year, especially since Fleur's bonding and the second task, so Harry and Hermione had scaled down their plans a little. They changed it so that they were now only doing their NEWTS on their core subjects, plus Care of Magical Creatures, Muggle World Studies and Magical World Studies that year, and reduced the workload on the rest of their electives and their masteries, so that they could be spread over two years. They both managed to get straight 'O's for their ten NEWTS that year, so they'd be working on getting their NEWTs in Advanced Arithmancy, Ancient Runes, Ancient Studies and Alchemy next year, as well as their masteries in Transfiguration, Charms, Potions, Defence, Arithmancy and Runes, that should be easy...ish?
Fleur, Penny and Hagrid also did their NEWTs for their core subjects (plus Magical World Studies and Care of Magical Creatures for Fleur, Muggle and Magical World studies for Penny and Care of Magical Creatures for Hagrid), so they got nine, nine and eight NEWTs respectively, mostly 'O's and some 'E's for Fleur and Penny, with a few more 'E's for Hagrid. They would be going into their third year in the Nobles Group with their remaining electives and their masteries.
The others cruised through their OWLs with 'O's and 'E's, and they all decided to split up their NEWTs the way the first bunch had to make it more workable, do their NEWTs for their core subjects and easier electives in the first year and finish their more challenging electives and hopefully their masteries in the second year.
Sue and Millie were the Heads of Noble and Ancient Houses and Neville and Daphne were Heirs to Noble and Ancient Houses, so they could meet the criteria to keep Nobles Tower, even if there weren't more complications to make Harry, Hermione and Fleur drag out their masteries over another two years.
After all, Fleur would be carrying her pregnancy over the next year as well and…. Well how often did things go to plan for Harry? None of them were silly enough to believe that the political problems in Magical Britain were going away, even if Arthur did take over as Minister in the next year.
Hermione also pointed out that Gabrielle would officially be joining them next year. Gabi had spent most of the past year with them, getting a start on the subjects she'd be studying when she did start school (she either shared Fleur's room in the Tower or went home to Delacour Chateau, and she never left Nobles Tower when she was at Hogwarts. If she'd stayed over the night before the second task those bastards wouldn't have managed to snatch her, as only Potter elves had access to the Tower).
Gabi had successfully completed the exams for her first three years in secret, so she would be officially starting as a Fourth year (maybe even a Fifth year if she could do the Fourth year exams by the end of the summer break), and she was hoping to be well into her Sixth year subjects if not doing her Sixth year exams by the end of the year. Madame Maxime was not happy to be losing both Fleur and Gabrielle to Hogwarts, but she accepted that this would be the best option for both of them.
While all of this was going on, they started the trials for Abbott, Lestrange, Somerset, Flint, Scrimgeour and everyone else who had been arrested in connection with the attempts on the lives of the Heads of the Noble and Most Ancient Houses of Potter, Peverell, Gryffindor, Slytherin, Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff, the Heirs to the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black, the Noble and Ancient Houses of Flamel and Moody and their Betrothed (and the Betrothed of the Heir to the Noble and Ancient House of Greengass).
The House of Granger had been excluded as it was only 'Noble', and the House of Delacour because it was a French House, not a British one, but Harry and Hermione qualified as the betrothed for each other's houses and House Greengrass, and Fleur and Gabrielle both qualified because they were betrothed to Harry Potter. They had been planning on waiting until the end of the Tournament to do this because they wanted Marcus Flint to testify, but the Troll in the maze had robbed them of that.
The trials went fairly quickly, as they had taken copies of their memories (including Marcus Flint's) when they were first questioned under Veritaserum, and these were replayed when they were questioned again in front of the Wizengamot. Their biggest disappointment was the fact that they didn't have enough evidence to directly link Fudge, Bagnold or the French Minister to the matters at hand and lay charges on them.
The sentence for most of those involved was pre-determined by the law that Minerva had raised that day in the Great Hall, the penalty for attempts on the lives of the Heads or Heirs of Noble and Ancient or higher Houses of Magical Britain, and their Betrothed, was death! All of the titles, holdings and wealth of all of the British Houses were taken, to be distributed among the effected Houses, and their House names were eradicated in Magical Britain.
The French Houses could not be eradicated by an order from Britain, but they did manage to seize the titles, holdings and wealth of the House of Lestrange and the others involved, which were all transferred to the French Houses of Flamel and Delacour. Magical France had similar laws in regard to the Heads, Heirs and Betrothed of the Noblesse Ancienne Houses, so the Ministre de la Magie couldn't sweep the matter under the rug as he had wished to. Once the ICW had ratified the findings of the Wizengamot, the houses involved were doomed.
The most controversial aspect of the trials was related to Hannah Abbott, as her role in obtaining Harry's blood for her father to use it to force him to compete in the Tournament was uncovered and proven, as was the fact that her only concern after her father's plans went into play was what would happen to her if anyone found out. She had lied when asked about this, and it was only when she was under Veritaserum that she finally admitted the truth.
Arguments that she was only thirteen and didn't know what she was doing were countered by comparing her to Harry, Hermione, Sue, Neville, Daphne, Tracey and Padma, who were all around the same age and represented Noble Houses as she did, and Luna and Astoria who were even younger. In every comparison, her peers' actions reflected what was expected of those who would soon begin to take over Magical Britain (the other side quickly dropped the argument that Harry and Hermione already were taking over, because they realised that it wasn't helping their case), while Hannah only thought of herself.
The arguments that most of them were the Heads or Heirs of their houses and therefore would have been raised to deal with these matters was easily countered by the fact that both Harry and Hermione had been raised in the Muggle world, so they didn't really know anything about Magical Britain until they came to Hogwarts, and that Tracey, Padma and Astoria weren't the heirs to their houses either.
(Obviously none of these people had ever bothered reading the articles in the Daily Prophet after Xeno took over that pointed out that all of those 'Boy-Who-Lived' stories that everyone judged Harry by had been nothing but works of fiction that had been cranked out by people who just wanted to make money off the name.)
In the end, the others gave up arguing and they decided Hannah's fate, but even given the serious nature of her role in this, none of them were really comfortable with the idea of sending a thirteen year old girl to Azkaban. This was why Amelia made a quick decision and revealed the Red Letter program to the Wizengamot, pointing out that this would allow the girl to live a relatively normal life, but at the same time they could track her and monitor her actions, and suppress her magic if she was doing something she shouldn't. Amelia had to try and ignore her own niece bursting into laughter when she said that they could apply the mark some place on the girl's body that would be covered by her clothes, so no-one would see it.
When she took Sue to task about this afterwards, Sue explained. "Auntie Ami, Hannah has been getting in trouble with boys since before she even went to Hogwarts! I'm willing to bet that plenty of boys would see that mark, no matter where it was on her body!"
This in turn led to Hermione bursting out laughing, but she said that she'd send Amelia a copy of the Scarlet Letter, promising that that would explain what she was laughing about.
The rest of the Wizengamot ignored Sue's outburst, and voted to apply the Red Letter mark to Hannah Smith (she'd gone back to her Muggleborn mother's name when the name Abbott was eradicated) and use that to monitor her behaviour, so she was sent back to Hogwarts after the Summer break with the mark.
Amelia had long since gotten rid of the diehard Purebloods in the Improper use of Magic Office and restructured it to actually watch for the improper use of magic, rather than just persecute Muggleborn and Half-Blood witches and wizards who lived in Muggle areas. The people running the office now were quite excited about the idea of being able to track and monitor witches and wizards with this mark.
Their excitement only increased when testing had confirmed that they could remotely suppress the magic of anyone wearing the mark who was acting inappropriately, and that that didn't effect their ability to track or monitor them. The fact that the mark gave out a burning sensation when the magic suppression was activated didn't bother them in the least, as they regarded this as a valid warning to the one with the mark (the original reason had been to make them react so that they'd be easy to spot when the Aurors or Officers arrived to take them into custody for whatever it was that they'd done to cause the suppression to be activated).
What this meant was that Miss Smith was giving them a log term opportunity to observe what happened when people were wearing the Red Letter mark outside of Azkaban. This would be useful experience because in few years time, the first of the ones wearing the mark would start being released from Azkaban and they'd have to monitor their behaviour then.
Between the round-up of what they hoped was the last of the real Death Eaters and Voldemort supporters, and the trials for what happened with the Triwizard Tournament, over a dozen more Pureblood houses were eradicated and/or lost everything in Magical Britain, and the House of Lestrange and four more were pretty well wiped out in France as well. Most of what was taken from these houses went to Houses of the Potter Alliance, which was now aligned to the Delacour Alliance in France, as they were starting to prod the French governing body to look at long standing issues as well.
This meant that the balance of power in Magical Britain had swung even further in the Potter Alliance's favour. The Delacour Alliance in France also grew quite a bit in the wake of the trials, because many of the French Houses were not comfortable to find that the dominant group in their government was willing to directly attack Noble Houses that opposed their ideas like this.
Just about all of the extended family were at Potter Manor for the summer break again, Louis and Apolline were in France, and Minerva, Pomona, Filius, Aurora (and Sirius) and Poppy were staying at Hogwarts because of their Headmistress, Healer and House Master/Mistress duties, but most of the rest of them were staying at the Manor. Ted and Andi and Arthur and Amelia went to London for work each day, the rest of them were involved in the students on-going education. Even Madam Marchbanks spent a fair deal of time at the Manor, because she got to spend time with her peers and friends, Minerva, Augusta and Alastor. She also helped with some of the instruction and held exams at the Manor as well.
They spent some time nursing the Griffin back to health and getting it settled into living at Tiroedd y Frân. The Sphinx decided that she was happy living on the estate for now, but reserved the right to change her mind come winter.
Hagrid didn't want to leave Tiroedd y Frân, but they couldn't blame him really, as they'd now added a Griffin and a Sphinx to their herds of Hippogriffs, Thestrals and Unicorns and the Centaur and Merpeople colonies, not to mention the Mngwas and the fact that the Goblins rotated their guard dragons to Tiroedd y Frân to give them time in the sun. It was a dream come true for Hagrid.
For all the work they were doing, they had time for fun and relaxation as well, so overall it was a good summer.
The main stress came from the fact that Harry and Hermione had to get married, well they didn't have to, but just as Anne's advice for them to perform their bonding ritual before Harry and Fleur did had been sound advice, so was Andi's when she said that Hermione should be married first as the Primary Wife before Harry married Fleur for the Delacour line continuation union. Millie also decided to get married to Harry.
Hermione raised the issue of the clause in the betrothal contracts that stated that they couldn't get married until they'd both reached their majority, but Ted explained that this was only an issue if they wanted it to be. He walked them through another rule that had been brought in back in the days of the Goblin Rebellions. This one stated that where they had willing chosen to be married, the Head of a Noble House was deemed to have reached their majority on their wedding day, so if she and Millie decided to get married, then the condition of having reached their majority would be met on their wedding day. Hermione and Millie looked at each other and nodded, accepting that that was good enough and they wanted to go ahead.
The biggest issue, of course, was that Hermione couldn't think of any way to tell her parents about this that wouldn't result in a total meltdown, so she decided not to tell them. They agreed that the Hermione's eight, Fleur's one and Millie's two marriages would be held on consecutive days after Harry's thirteenth birthday. That way he, Hermione and Millie would all be thirteen when they married, and Fleur would still be sixteen, so the age difference didn't look so much.
Part of the reason that they were proceeding with Millie's marriages as well was that Harry had also performed the bonding ritual with her. What they found after Fleur's bonding ritual though was that while they were in each other's heads, Millie still couldn't sleep without nightmares unless she shared Harry and Hermione's bed.
They talked the situation over with Anne, as she was the expert on human as well as Veela bonds, and she suggested, if the three of them were comfortable with it, that Harry performing the bonding ritual with Millie might help her. Millie pointed out that she wasn't a virgin after what those bastards had done to her, so that wasn't an issue, and she, Hermione and Harry agreed to go forward with the bonding ritual.
While it didn't work quite as they had hoped, because Millie still couldn't sleep well without them, their bond was closer and they were more content with each other, so it was worth doing. What they saw over the deeper bond though was that Millie wasn't, and probably never would be, comfortable with any man or boy but Harry, so when it was decided that she and Fleur would be marrying Harry in early August, Hermione asked Millie whether she'd like to go ahead with her marriages too, and they all agreed to do that.
Ted pointed out that the traditional marriage ceremonies in the magical world required that the marriage be consummated on the wedding day for the marriage to be binding, but Hermione just shrugged and said that they had all done that already, so doing it again shouldn't be a problem. That got a laugh out of all of them, especially as the reason that they needed to go forward with this was Fleur's pregnancy.
There was one surprising development in this, because when Harry contacted the Flamels to make sure that there wouldn't be any issues in regard to him getting married as the Heir to the British and French Branches of the House of Flamel, Nicholas decided then and there to make Harry the head of the British Branch of the House of Flamel before the wedding, though he would remain the Heir to the main French branch of the House of Flamel. Nicholas made the necessary arrangements through Gringott, so Harry was married as the Head of the British House of Flamel rather than the Heir. He was married as the Heir to the main House of Flamel though.
Augusta Longbottom stepped in to perform the actual marriage ceremonies for them, and they were all grateful to have finished when they'd gotten through the eight ceremonies required for the eight betrothal contracts between Harry and Hermione.
After the bonds of marriage had been sealed by consummation (Harry and Hermione were grateful that only one act of consummation was required for their eight marriages), Harry, Hermione and Millie all received a noticeable kick from the family magics of each house as the spouse of the Head of the House. Fleur missed out on some of this because both she and Harry were still the heirs to the houses in their union, so they did not get as much access to the Family Magic as the others did.
As the spouse to the Head of four Noble and Most Ancient Houses, Hermione received the biggest boost from this. Harry was the spouse to the Heads of two Noble and Most Ancient Houses, one Noble and Ancient House and one Noble House and Heirs to two more Noble and Ancient Houses, while Millie was the spouse to the Head of one Noble and Ancient House, but the House of Flamel was an old and powerful one, and its family magic was almost as strong as that of some Most Ancient Houses (in British terms, the main House of Flamel would have qualified as Most Ancient, even though that wasn't recognised in the French parlance, and for that matter the British House of Flamel had been created during the Norman Conquest, the event that ended the 'Most Ancient' description).
Harry had also received that family magic kick when he was made the Head of the British House of Flamel.
A/N: I realise that some will be tempted to argue that the marriages at the end of this chapter are inappropriate, please don't. I could point out that most of the characters are old enough to get married in most societies (reminding you that two of them are really eighteen and nineteen), and that in some current societies marriage at thirteen to much older men is considered right and acceptable. What I will point out though is that this is fiction, and it's not set in our world, it's set in a different world where what is expected or acceptable is different from our world, which is the reason that Hermione has decided against telling her parents that she was getting married, as it is just one more thing that she cannot explain to them.