Disclaimer: Standard stuff (I don't own anything, I won't be making profit, any resemblance to previously published content is purely coincidental, JK Rowling is the coolest, etc.). If I make any legal errors regarding copyrighted material, inform me and I will correct them immediately.

Harry Potter and the Lightning Scar

"Could this bloody thing be any heavier?" Wormtail muttered to himself, dragging a massive cauldron up the hill to the Riddle mansion. Of course the Dark Lord would want a cauldron which could not be levitated, he thought bitterly, rubbing his shoulders to try to get the painful knots out. Peter Pettigrew had never been large or strong, even in the prime of his youth, and spending a dozen years as a rat had certainly done nothing to help. I'm going to be sore for bloody weeks. And then I've got to go and drag this bloody thing back down to the cemetery.

A better—or at least more thoughtful—henchman would have realized that even if the cauldron couldn't be levitated, something beneath it could, or he could skip transporting it at all by just putting it under muggle repelling and Notice-Me-Not charms and leaving it in the cemetery. However, Wormtail, while very capable of initiative, cleverness, and foresight when engaged in self-preservation, could not do much better than Crabbe or Goyle in most other (non-life-or-death) situations. Even as a Marauder, he had usually been relegated to being the lookout or providing an alibi. Thus, he would be dragging this huge, heavy cauldron up a large hill by hand, and then a few months later, he'd be bringing it back down again.

I wonder what the Dark Lord needs a blood iron cauldron for, anyway, Wormtail mused. They were heavily regulated or outright banned by most magical governments, since their creation required that they be quenched in freshly-spilled human blood immediately after the iron was cast. Therefore, one of this size must have required the deaths of scores of people, and Wormtail figured that it was likely one of the largest blood iron cauldrons that had ever been made. The ancient Aztecs and Egyptians, who had taken sacrificial blood magic to depths never seen before or since, had lacked easy and reliable access to iron, and were stuck making do with blood ceramics and blood bronze, and thus none of their larger cauldrons had survived the millennia since their creation. Needless to say, the artifact had been extremely difficult to find and acquire, and Wormtail had been required to enlist the efforts of Caractacus Burke (of Borgin & Burke's, and therefore an expert in the field of dark artifacts) to locate the cauldron's now former owner, one Wolfric Nickolaus Stein (whose nom de guerre had been the rather unimaginative—but, in its day, terror-inspiring—"Wolfenstein"), who had been hiding in South America since fleeing from his infamous castle after Grindelwald's fall back in 1945. Of course, once they had located Stein, they had realized instantly that if anyone had a big enough blood iron cauldron, it would be him.

Stein's modern public persona had been that of a muggle physician, an unsurprising yet still chilling disguise for the man who had been Grindelwald's chief liaison to the maddest of Adolf Hitler's many mad doctors. Given his former occupation, it had not been a surprise to find numerous dark artifacts in his possession, and the blood iron cauldron had been the largest and most valuable. Though several of the mercenaries they had hired to help had fallen victim to the old German's gruesome traps and curses, Wormtail and Burke eventually managed to successfully murder Stein and steal his impressive collection of dark artifacts. Wormtail had taken only the cauldron and some gold, while Burke had made off with the rest, assuring Wormtail that the Dark Lord would get his due share of the proceeds from the sales.

After divvying up the spoils, Burke had helped him murder the surviving mercenaries—after all, their services were much cheaper if they weren't alive to collect the bill, and the Dark Lord didn't want news of the blood iron cauldron's theft to get out (in fact, had Burke not already been a loyal and marked Death Eater, he would have met the same fate). For a few mercenaries who had been hit by Stein's spells, it was more of a mercy killing anyway. Wormtail was desperately thankful that Stein had refused Burke's offer to join the Death Eaters—some of the experiments they had come across in his dungeons had been horrifyingly twisted, even compared to the things Wormtail had seen in the Dark Lord's service. The worst, most chilling part had been finding Stein's experimental notes and observations; they were shockingly sedate and sane (except for the subject matter, of course) which was somehow much more disturbing than if they had been the ravings of a madman...at least madness would have provided a simple explanation for the horrors they had come across. It was no small wonder that the name "Wolfenstein" had inspired so much fear during Grindelwald's reign—as much as Wormtail was driven by self-preservation, he knew that if this mission had gone the other way, he would have rather died in the fight (despite Stein's refusal to use spells as quick, clean, and painless as the Killing Curse) than to have fallen into Stein's hands as a prisoner and test subject.

Wormtail swallowed to keep bile from rising in his throat, and shook his head to clear away—at least temporarily, until his inevitable nightmares—the thoughts of what he had seen in Stein's dungeons. After all, he was only halfway up the hill, and he had work of his own to do.

Classes resumed without much fanfare after the Easter holidays. Harry figured that McGonagall and Dumbledore must have spoken to the other professors about laying off Harry even more in the wake of finding out about his animagus form—they probably realized that they had finally used up all of their remaining goodwill when McGonagall cast that revealing charm on him. Even Snape managed to keep a mostly civil tongue when dealing with Harry, though it obviously pained him to do so. Having had a fairly good week, Harry decided to cap it off with a nice, leisurely thunderbird flight around the grounds that Saturday night.

Thus, Harry found himself a few thousand feet above the Hogwarts grounds on the first of May, and within a few minutes of flying around, his laser-accurate raptor eyes detected a strange pattern of shifting lines on the Quidditch pitch. After flying in for a closer look, he quickly realized that it was the beginnings of a hedge maze—with hedge walls only a few inches tall so far—in which most of the internal walls shifted randomly. However, he also noticed that the entrance and the center of the maze remained stationary—obviously, the third task of the Triwizard Tournament would require the champions to make their way through the maze to the center, maybe to grab some prize or defeat some monster.

Shouldn't be too tough, Harry thought to himself as he winged his way back toward the school. Ideas were already coming to him, and he was certain that his team of Daphne, Sirius, and Remus would have plenty more.

On the last Thursday of May, McGonagall held Harry back after Transfiguration, and informed him (stiffly and formally, as though trying to ensure that none of her words could be construed as offensive—Harry briefly felt a pang of sadness that it had come to this, but hardened himself and kept his expression blank) that Ludo Bagman would be telling the champions about the third task that night at the Quidditch pitch.

That night, Harry flew down to the pitch on his broom, having little interest in wasting time walking back and forth between the castle and the Quidditch pitch. It turned out that the third task was exactly as Harry had expected. Bagman told the four champions that they would enter the maze in order of their tournament standing (thus, Harry would go first, Viktor would go second, Cedric would go third, and Fleur would go last), make their way through the various obstacles, traps, riddles, and creatures, and the first champion to reach the Triwizard Cup in the center of the maze would be declared the winner. All in all, it seemed fairly straightforward, and Harry had the advantage of nearly an extra month of prior knowledge, planning, and preparation for the task. Really, Harry mused as he flew back to the castle, he didn't see how he could lose.

While Ludo Bagman explained the third task to the four Triwizard champions, Bartemius Crouch, Sr. was stumbling through the Forbidden Forest, desperately trying to make his way to Hogwarts. If only he could make it to Dumbledore...Dumbledore had to know, he had to be told!

Up ahead, beyond the trees, he could see someone shoot into the sky upon a broomstick, and a somewhat portly man leading three teens back toward the castle. Maybe he could alert one of them! He opened his mouth to call out—

Bartemius Crouch, Jr. lowered his smoking wand, and watched as his father's body slumped soundlessly to the ground. It was a good thing that Moody's magical eye could see so well in the dark—it had been a difficult shot, firing through branches and brush, and it would have been made impossible had darkness been thrown into the mix. The cutting curse wasn't his preferred killing spell, but it worked well enough when cast silently, and it had bitten deeply enough into his father's neck that he couldn't even gurgle (let alone shout) as he died. Moments later, the corpse had been transfigured into a bone, and Crouch disillusioned himself and buried it in the freshly-dug earth near Hagrid's cabin, where the half-giant's students had been fooling about with nifflers.

He didn't know how his father had managed to throw off the Imperius Curse—probably because the Dark Lord had delegated the responsibility for maintaining the curse to Wormtail, that incompetent, sniveling weakling—but in the end, it didn't matter. Crouch, Sr. was dead, the Dark Lord's plan was safe, and Crouch, Jr. had finally fulfilled a lifelong dream. All told, it had been a good night.

"Harry, mate—"

"—old buddy, old pal—"

"—won't you please give us a break here?"

"An arm—"

"—a leg—"

"—either—"

"—both—"

"...what the hell are you two talking about?" Harry asked, surprised. Of all the people who might suggest that, it would be the Weasley twins, but Harry still couldn't quite see what they were getting at. Luckily, he had remembered to cast a silencing spell around his booth as soon as the twins had sat down; otherwise, people would be giving him even stranger looks than they already were.

"Nobody is taking odds against you! Everyone just thinks you'll blast your way through the maze without any trouble—you need a handicap. We can't make any easy money off of you if you're this heavily favored!"

Within a few weeks of Bagman showing the champions the maze, the word had gotten out—honestly, the tournament organizers couldn't have been so foolish as to think it wouldn't, considering the improving weather. Did they think that nobody would go down to the Quidditch pitch before the third task? Now, with less than a week before the third task, students were regularly going to the pitch to draw maps of the maze, try to figure out the wall movement pattern (it had been obvious to Harry within a few minutes of watching that there was no pattern at all, but that didn't stop the masses from trying), and to generally just hang out; it was, after all, the beginning of summer, and the Quidditch pitch had always been a popular place to relax before end-of-term exams.

"Sorry, Gred, Forge," Harry responded with a grin. "I like my limbs the way they are, thank you very much." The twins had already made a shockingly large amount of money this year by betting on his performance during the Triwizard Tournament (and the pick-up Quidditch games, and his confrontations with the professors, and just about anything and everything that they could get people to take odds on). In fact, their gambling record was so good that some muggleborns and half-bloods suspected that the twins might have somehow acquired (or, more likely, stolen) a Time-Turner, and were Back-to-the-Future-ing all of their bets.

The twins looked a bit dejected at Harry's (clearly unreasonable) refusal to cripple himself for them, so he decided to throw them a bone. "If nobody will take your bets, maybe you should just take it as a compliment. Or, you know, just take bets from all the spectators from abroad right before the task, as they won't know any better."

"Harry, you're a genius!" Fred and George cried out simultaneously, and kissed him on the cheeks before running out of the Great Hall (presumably to make mischief of some sort). The rest of the students and staff in the Great Hall gave a collective shudder—they hadn't heard most of the conversation, but they had watched the Weasley twins get excited, kiss Harry Potter, and rush off to do who knows what. Even more worryingly, they could see Harry still chuckling about it. Whatever they were up to, it certainly couldn't be good.

Author's Note

Wormtail does a thing! Harry finds a maze! A Crouch kills a Crouch! The twins run a huge gambling ring!

As of the end of Chapter 32, HPatLS is at 88753 words.

This is a fairly short chapter, focused mostly on the buildup to the third task.

I thought it'd be interesting if Wormtail finds out that when it comes to being horrible, Voldemort is just the new kid on the block. If Grindelwald was the magical Hitler, it was only fitting that he should have his very own magical Mengele. "Wolfenstein" is a nod to the old game, but it also sort of fits—as Mengele had his camp, Wolfenstein had his castle. I didn't want to go into too much detail about what Wormtail saw down in Stein's dungeons, because honestly I didn't want my brain to imagine things as awful as what would surely be down there.

Next up: THE THIRD TASK. I'll see you next week, and don't forget about it, because there's gonna be some good stuff.

(Review! Please, oh please, review!)