A/N So I was planning on having this out on Friday, but my computer decided to have some weird tech glitches, so I couldn't finish it up until tonight. Having said that, I am switching the upload day to Friday, so hopefully that will keep me from posting a day or so late every other week. Some of you have asked when canon divergence will happen, and that will start in this chapter and then continue to bigger things as I develop the story further.
As always, unbeta-ed, sorry if I miss any errors.
Disclaimer: I do not own the rights to Harry Potter or Supernatural, or anything belonging to J.K. Rowling or Eric Kripke, I'm just using the characters for fun. I receive no money off of this story. Don't sue me.
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Chapter 19: The Goblet of Fire
"What'dya got, Bennett?" A young police officer whipped his head up to meet the eyes of the constable. He swallowed, looking back around to stare at the body lying on the floor of the relatively downtrodden house. Bennett was stuck. There were no obvious signs of an intruder, and no signs that would suggest the man on the floor had been murdered. But the victim's face was stuck in a terrible expression of fright, something almost gruesome to look at.
"Not sure." He walked around the body to check the rest of the scene, noting the burnt scuffs on the kettle and the keyholder missing a key in the spot labeled 'Main House'. "I'd say he had a heart attack, or a stroke maybe. Except, well…" The young bobbie gestured to the man lying on the floor.
"Blimey." The constable looked at the frozen face of the corpse, his own face scrunching up in displeasure. "I've never seen a stiff lookin' like that. Poor sod."
"Do you have any theories, sir?" The older man circled the body, glancing up and around the scene for clues, not coming up with much. He shook his head regrettably.
"'Fraid not." He shrugged. "Best to just leave it to the soccos." Despite following procedure, both men walked away from the house with unsettling feelings in their stomachs, avoiding the looming Riddle House and missing the flicker of motion from one of the upper windows.
Watching from a shadowed window of the mansion, Peter Pettigrew ducked awayas the muggles turned towards him. This left him facing a large wingback chair, one that housed a small bundle. Despite its size, the creature covered by the cloth was the most frightening thing that Wormtail had ever seen. Small and sharp, the fetal version of Voldemort was more disturbing to Peter than anything his master had done during the height of his reign. Of course, he had to be careful about thoughts like that. The Dark Lord liked to invade his mind every so often, regaining the strength he had lost fourteen years ago.
"Wormtail…" The bundle shifted, and Peter froze at the high voice, still tremor-invoking with a hint of sleep. "Come closer." Peter edged closer to the seat, stifling a whimper.
"Y-Yes, my Lord?"
"Face me." Peter looked into his master's eyes, regretting it almost immediately when Voldemort tore through his mind. Then, the buffering presence seemed to stop, slowing in its destruction. "It is as I thought last time. There is a block on your memories. If I could just…" Peter screamed, falling to his knees, unable to look away from the red orbs that held his own watery eyes. And then the pain was gone.
"It appears your mind is as fragile as that ministry worker. Without my body, I cannot access the memories without leaving you useless. It seems you are lucky indeed, Wormtail." Peter shook, sinking further to the floor in relief. "I am hungry. Nagini, come." Peter flinched again at the strange hissing noises coming from the bundle. Thin, pale limbs reach out for the gargantuan snake, which slithered across the carpet, around Wormtail and up to its master.
Peter gulped, standing shakily before reaching for Nagini, jumping back twice when her head snapped forward in warning. It was only the stare of his master that forced him to finally take her head, moving the exposed fangs towards a bottle taken from the store on the table across from the chair. He milked Nagini, collecting the strong venom into what amounted to a sippy cup, scuttling away from the animal when he was finally finished. Peter picked up the bundle, beginning to bottle feed Voldemort, both disgusted and terrified out of his mind.
He glanced out the window again, watching as the muggles crowding around the old muggle's house started to disperse, leaving behind only yellow tape and an empty home.
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Harry yanked down her newspaper, frowning at the contents. A sensationalized piece by Rita Skeeter, and a whole collection of anxious articles and write-ins about the events at the Quidditch Cup. There hadn't been a dead body in the woods, just a scared House Elf and a bunch of idiotic ministry officials. She tossed the paper onto the seat next to her, instead pulling a copy of Spellman's Syllabary out of her bag, drilling herself on some of the definitions while half-listening to the conversation between Ron and Hermione. Harry had gone to Professor McGonagall at the end of the year, asking to test into Ancient Runes. Her self-studying had gone well, and Harry was placed into the fourth year Runes class for her next year. She'd finally dropped divination, despite the events of last year providing some evidence that Trelawney was in fact a seer.
"Come on, Hermione, everyone knows you got the top grades!" Ron protested. Hermione's face was wrinkled in concern as she flipped through her defense book.
"No, Ron, I failed the Defense exam!"
"You got an E-"
"I completely ruined my grade! All because of that Boggart!"
"What was your boggart, anyway?" Hermione stopped, looking away from the redhead. Harry looked over the top of her book in interest.
"Never you mind."
"Well you've done it now, Hermione. Come on, what was it?" Harry leaned forward, a teasing grin on her face. Hermione harrumphed.
"Well, if you must know, it was Professor McGonagall."
"McGonagall?"
"Well I can sorta see how she'd be scary, but-" Hermione interrupted Ron.
"She was telling me how I'd failed all of my classes and-" Ron exploded into laughter, and Hermione frowned. "It's not funny!"
"Sorry it's just, that's so stupid! It would never happen!" Ron continued to chuckle, leaving Hermione glaring at him while Harry held a small smile on her face. She knew many of her peers Boggarts had been juvenile, if not representative of some deeper fear. She could see how Hermione's greatest fear could be truly scary. Failing all of the classes might not seem so terrible to Ron, but failing all of them and having to redo a year or be expelled, that must have been daunting to the resident bookworm.
"Well at least it wasn't a spider. That's a stupid fear, you're so much bigger, you can just move them! Or squish them!"
"Well you know what, Hermione? I didn't see you there in the Forbidden Forest getting carried off by giant monsters, in the pitch dark!"
"You're right, I was probably in the hospital wing. You remember, don't you?" Ron grumbled.
"Whatever."
"That's what happens when you make fun of someone's greatest fear Ron. And I thought you'd learned your lesson about messing with Hermione after she punched Pansy last year."
"What was your boggart, Harry? It was like it switched in the middle of forming, which I didn't think was possible because it's not listed in any of the books."
"We have to work on that dependence on books, Hermione."
"Don't avoid the question, you know ours!" Ron said.
"You really can't think of a reason why my Boggart would be worse than yours?"
"You're right, sorry Harry. I forgot." Harry took a deep breath, looking at the remorseful expressions on her friend's faces.
"No, I guess it's only fair." She sighed, hesitating for a second more. "My boggart was a dementor, but I don't think I'm scared of dementors, but more what they represent? I couldn't fight them in the train carriage, and it took a year for me to actually figure out the spell, and that's never really happened to me either. It made me feel helpless again, like when I was with that stupid Wendigo in the woods. I don't like that feeling." The mood in the compartment had dipped severely, something quickly remedied when Ron cleared his throat.
"Right, well. Like that American motto; What stays in Vegas, happens."
"Ron…"
"What?" Harry once again looked away from their conversation, her eyes going back to the book in front of her but not taking in the words. She felt that familiar prickling of guilt, but she justified it because she wasn't ready to tell anyone what had happened in the Chamber of Secrets, and her explanation had been mostly true. The Boggart had shifted form, starting as that black mass she'd seen rising up out of the floor when she'd… been incapacitated after the Basilisk attacked her. She didn't really want to explain how she'd seen that figure, but she did know part of why she was so scared of it. When she'd been, for lack of a better understanding, dead, she'd felt so helpless. The darkness was so cold and empty, and she'd felt as if there were simultaneously no one there and everyone there, watching her from the shadows, just out of reach.
That feeling of helplessness was probably Harry's greatest fear, and everything she'd done since the Wendigo all those years ago had been to keep from feeling that ever again.
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After successfully avoiding Peeves' one-sided water balloon fight, Harry happily sat down at the Gryffindor table, drying herself and her friends off with a flick of her wand. The sorting was fairly ordinary, apart from the tiny blonde boy that was effectively drowning in Hagrid's coat. He waved to Colin, and Harry had a bad feeling her fanclub was about to expand.
The usual announcements were run-of-the-mill, apart from the thundering crash that shook the usually stable Great Hall, preceding the entrance of a grizzled man with one eye and one leg. The doors to the Great Hall slammed into the walls, bouncing off as the man set off, limping down the aisle.
"May I introduce this year's Defense Against the Dark Arts Professor, Alastor Moody."
"You're JOKING!" Dumbledore was not joking.
Of course, then he had to go and upstage himself, announcing that the Triwizard Tournament would be held at Hogwarts that year. Harry almost sighed in relief when he continued with the age restrictions. At least she wouldn't have to deal with it this year. She'd love to compete and show off her skills, but with her plan to generally stay out of Dumbledore's attention, at least, to draw the least amount of attention as she could from him, she wouldn't want to enter a tournament that practically screamed 'look at me'.
"What's the chance that Harry gets in trouble because of the tournament?" Ron asked, leaning towards Hermione.
"Hey!" Harry whispered. "I take offense to that."
"Ten galleons."
"Hermione!"
"The laws of statistical probability do not lie, Harry." The green eyed witch was silent.
"I'll bet twenty galleons that this has to do with the danger I get into at the end of every year."
"No bet. I'm not stupid enough for those odds." Harry rolled her eyes at Ron, returning her attention to the Headmaster. She had a feeling about the whole affair. She didn't know if it was good or bad, just that something big was going to happen. And soon.
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"What the hell are Blast-Ended Skrewts?" Harry yanked her hand away from the box at her station, avoiding a particularly explosive blast shooting out the behind (front?) of the creature.
"I don't know, but Hagrid will get in so much trouble if they're illegal crossbreeds."
"Well, they might be useful, right?" Ron asked, snatching away his hand after dropping some woodlice in the box.
"Well…"
"Having fun, Potter?" Malfoy asked, smirking from his station across from them. Crabbe and Goyle were dropping piles of food into the box, heads turned dumbly as they watched the Skrewts skitter around.
"Aren't you enjoying yourself? I for one think this is an amazing learning opportunity."
"Think of how much practice we'll get with dodging." Ron muttered.
"Learning what? How to avoid getting stung?" Harry smirked at Ron, whose ears turned red at the similarities of his and Mafloy's comments.
Malfoy struck once again, later in the day, with an article about Ron's father and their new Defense professor.
"...such an undignified and potentially embarrassing scene."
"Malfoy, I don't know if it's escaped your notice, but there is not in fact a section of the friendship booklet on insulting each other's families."
"As if I'd ever be friends with you, Potter. And are you suddenly part of the Weasley's? It's a shame, I thought the Potters were supposed to be rich."
"I don't think you're understanding what I'm saying. But that's alright, any day now you'll get it." Malfoy sneered. Harry turned to leave, when a loud BANG! Sent her spinning back around with her wand out. Malfoy was gone, in his place was a sleek white ferret. Despite the fact that Moody definitely didn't have permission to inflict transfiguration as a punishment, and it technically breached all sorts of student-teacher contracts, Harry found that she didn't care about the illegality, and could be caught laughing about it for weeks afterwards.
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Harry was rethinking her opinion on Moody by the time his first class rolled around. Fred and George had seemed disturbingly enthusiastic, so she went in with high expectations. Hermione snagged three seats in the front row, and for once, Ron wasn't complaining about his proximity to the teacher.
"The Ministry doesn't seem to think you should know about such dark material, but I believe, and Dumbledore agrees, that you need to know what's out there." He flicked his wand towards the blackboard. "The Unforgivables. Name them." Ron shakily held up his hand.
"My dad told me about one. Uh, the Imperius?" Ron half-muttered, his eyes darting back and forth.
"Ronald Weasley. That would be Arthur Weasley's son?" Ron nodded. "Well, he would've had a lot of trouble with that one. The ministry had a lot of trouble with that a while back." he glanced meaningfully towards the back of the class, where all the Slytherin's sat, huddled together and looking forward mistrustfully. Moody pulled a spider out of the jar on his desk, setting it down in front of Ron's green face.
"Right then. Imperio!" Harry's mouth almost dropped when he cast the spell. The spider leapt around the desk, standing up and performing a disturbing tap-dance.
"Next?" Surprisingly, Neville raised a hand.
"Uh, the C-Cruciatus." Moody passed an inscrutable eye over Neville.
"You Longbottom?"
"Y-Yes sir." The grizzled man hummed, turned his magical eye back to the spider.
"The Cruciatus is the torture curse. You'll never have use for knives if you can cast it." His wand dipped almost artfully, aimed at the enlarged spider. "Crucio!"
Logically, Harry knew that spiders couldn't scream, but the writhing arachnoid on Moody's desk had to have been. She knew all about torture. She didn't love it, but she'd tortured a few demons trying to develop her knife. But this was so much worse. It was like Moody was disconnected from the pain he was causing. When she used her knife, Harry knew how much pain she was inflicting, and she had to do it her, the Cruciatus seemed too detached, dangerously so. If the caster couldn't understand how much pain they were imposing, they couldn't truly control the act.
She wasn't the only one disturbed by the spider, still flailing about on the wooden surface. Harry looked around, watching the distressed expressions on her classmate's faces, but none was so strong as Nevilles. He stared in horror at the spider, his knuckles white where he was clenching the desk.
"STOP IT! Stop it, can't you see it's bothering him!?" Hermione yelled, breaking the tense silence in the classroom. Moody pulled back, the spider stilling on the desk as if dead, apart from the occasional twitches of its legs. Ron looked greener than ever, but that was nothing compared to the grey of Neville's face. Moody's eyes glanced around, seeming to realise the feeling of the room. He moved on.
"Does anyone know the last curse?" His gruff voice interrupted the rigid stillness of the room. Harry set her jaw, raising her hand along with her eyes, staring straight at Moody. "Potter."
"Avada Kedavra." As she said it, a wave seemed to come over the room as everyone shifted in their chairs, catching their breaths.
"The killing curse." She'd seen it coming since he casted the Imperius, and wasn't surprised when a muttered 'Avada Kedavra' sent a flash of green light towards the spider, striking it and causing it to stop it's twitching. Ron and Hermione were staring in open disbelief. Malfoy's jaw was tight, and the rest of the Slytherin's were similarly offset. "No defense. No escaping it. Only one person has ever survived it, and she's sitting right in front of me." Harry felt everyone's eyes on her, but she leveled her gaze on Moody.
"Avada Kedavra is a curse that needs quite a bit of power behind it. I doubt any of you could give me more than a nosebleed if you tried it." Ron and Hermione glanced at each other and then Harry before looking back at Moody. "You've got to know what you're up against. CONSTANT VIGILANCE!" The whole class jumped.
"These curses are the Unforgivable Curses, and the use of any one of them will earn you a one-way ticket to Azkaban. That's what you're up against. I'll be here for one year only, as a favor to Dumbledore. Let's hope I can prepare you for what's out there. Class dismissed." There were a few seconds of stunned silence before everyone began to gather their bags, shuffling out of the door into the hall. Harry watched Neville draw away from the crowd of people muttering about the lesson. Hermione walked up to him.
"Are you alright Neville?" He nodded distractedly, staring at the wall in front of him. They all jumped around when the odd clunking noise that followed Moody neared them, and the wizard himself rounded the corner.
"It's all right, sonny, why don't you have a cup of tea?" Harry was about to leap in to suggest that Neville come with them to dinner when the boy nodded and moved quietly towards Moody. He looked much better later that night, sitting in the common room with a Herbology look. Still, Harry's opinion of Moody was damaged considerably.
All thoughts of the scarred professor were driven from her mind, however, when Hermione presented her with badges adorned with 'spew'.
"Hermione, I-"
"They're being enslaved Harry!"
"Look, I'd love to protest the government with you, but maybe you should gather some actual evidence?"
"I have! I've been in the library all week researching elf rights. Did you know they aren't allowed to own wands?"
"I did know that, I remember Winky and-"
"But it's worse than that because apparently a House Elf having possession of a wand was grounds for beheading! It's absolutely barbaric!"
"Well, yes, but I meant do you have any accounts from House Elves or other people interested in your… cause?"
"Well no, but I'm starting the Society for the Protection of Elfish Welfare for just that reason, and I need you to be treasurer." Hermione stared at Harry, her hand stretched towards her with a patterned badge with S.P.E.W. carefully printed on it. Harry rolled her eyes and grabbed the badge, pinning it to her robes. "Now that that's settled, Ronald, what are the main points for today's meeting?"
"I don't-"
"I was thinking we'd come up with a plan for new members. How much should we charge for dues?"
Thankfully they were interrupted by the arrival of Hedwig. Harry pulled off a scroll, recognizing Sirius' writing. Five minutes later, and Harry was sighing into a couch cushion, muffling some of the expletives she was letting slip.
"Dumbledore's reading what signs?"
"Harry, is Sirius coming back?" Harry sat up dragging her hands down her face.
"He is so stupid! Just because Dumbledore hired Moody doesn't mean a war is coming! And Moody's off his rocker anywayEven if some sort of battle was coming, there's nothing he can do by coming back here and getting his ass arrested!"
"Well I don't see how you can stop him now."
"Not helping Ron!" Hermione shoved his arm. Harry let out a whispery scream of frustration, shoving her face back into the cushion.
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Harry's temper was reignited a few weeks later when Moody started testing the Imperius curse on them all. Ron and Hermione resisted slightly when he flicked his wand towards them, Ron's knees buckling when Moody wanted him to jump, and Hermione aggressively punching the desk in front of her when she was supposed to slap herself. Harry had been teaching them some basics of occlumency, mainly the meditation. If her friends were going to know her secrets, they had to be able to protect them. Hermione was doing surprisingly well, but Harry figured that her organized mind was taking to Occlumency like a fish in water. Ron, meanwhile, was a little more temperamental, having more trouble grasping the concept.
When it was Harry's turn, she walked up to Moody, waiting for him to cast the curse. A flick of the wand later, and she was still waiting. His already gnarled face furrowed further.
"Imperio!" He said aloud, jabbing his wand at her. Still, Harry felt nothing, which she now realised was not supposed to happen. "Well, look at that. Potter's done it!" Moody smiled, well, he bared his teeth at her, clapping her on the shoulder. "It seems you're immune to more than one unforgivable, Potter. Everyone, watch." He cast the spell again, but Harry felt nothing. She knew it couldn't be her occlumency experience, because she wasn't nearly good enough for it to have such an effect, and everything she'd read about the subject had said that occlumency would help increase her resistance to the spell, not override it completely. Her mind flashed back to the Chamber, waking up to the stunned face of Tom Riddle.
Harry made sure to keep her features blank while Moody used her as a prop for the class, betraying none of the storm inside her mind as she tried to figure out just why another thing was different about her.
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A week later, Harry was huddled outside with the rest of the students, waiting in the cold for the arrival of the Beauxbatons and Durmstrang contingents. McGonagall was circling her house, nitpicking at their presentation.
"Miss Patil, take that ridiculous thing out of your hair!" Parvati removed her ornamental butterfly with a frown. Fred and George sidled up to Ron, trying to get him to join in on the betting pool for how the other schools would arrive.
"Have you figured out how you're going to enter the tournament yet?" Harry asked conversationally.
"We tried to ask McGonagall how the contestants would be picked."
"She just told us to get back to transfiguring our raccoons."
"What a pity."
"We considered calling for a bit of… help." Harry raised her eyebrow at that.
"Really? You think he would go for it?"
"We were wondering-"
"If you could tell us that." Harry thought about it for a moment. It did seem like the kind of thing Loki would be up for.
"I think it would be worth the chance. If you argue your case correctly. I'll put in a good word for you." They grinned almost evilly.
"Thanks Harry."
"We'll be sure to mention you when we're famous."
"Cause that's why I'm doing it." Harry rolled her eyes, turning back as a student yelled that he saw them. Harry let her other eyebrow rise as a giant blue house pulled by giant white horses came into view, plummeting towards the grounds before landing somewhat smoothly. The doors opened, and a boy in light blue robes hurried out with a footstool, placing it as a step as the largest woman Harry had ever seen stepped out gracefully. "Why Dorothy, you've grown," She muttered, watching as the woman kissed Dumbledore on both cheeks.
The crowd of Hogwarts students stirred once more, their attention going to the lake as it bubbled, revealing a large ship rising out of the water. Harry had a sudden image of wizard pirates, and was somewhat disappointed when the people walking down the gangplank were wearing heavy winter robes and not outfits indicative of unlawful sailors. Then Ron almost fainted at the sight of Victor Krum.
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"I've forgotten my quill. Hermione, surely you have a quill?"
"We all left our bags upstairs, Ronald."
"But it's Victor Krum! This is a great time to get an autograph, and I've forgotten my quill!" Ron groaned, watching the Durmstrang eat across from Malfoy, who looked inordinately pleased by the situation. Hermione was staring at the Beauxbatons students in disdain.
"Oh come on, it's not even that cold!" She muttered as the blue-clad students shivered.
"Calm down Hermione, your nationality is showing."
"Good evening ladies and gentlemen, ghosts and, most particularly, guests." Dumbeldore was standing now, his arms spread wide with that genial smile plastered on his face. And then there was food on the table, including strange dishes that Harry had never seen except on the cooking channel that Bobby claimed not to like but Harry constantly caught him watching.
The feast finished, with Harry still laughing over Ron's ineptness when it came to foreigners, female foreigners in particular.
"I'm telling you, she was a Veela." Hermione smacked him over the head without looking up from her food." The plates were wiped clean, and Dumbledore was speaking again, standing next to a large crate that had appeared before dinner.
"As you know, three champions will compete in the tournament. They will be chosen by an impartial selector...The Goblet of Fire!" The crate opened, and standing in it was a large, burnished goblet. Dumbledore waved his hand over it, and it jumped to life, filled with dancing flames. "To ensure that no underaged participants enter the drawing, I will be placing an age line around the goblet. Tomorrow night, on Halloween, the Goblet will deliver the names it has chosen to compete in the tournament." Harry noticed Fred and George with their heads together, whispering furiously. "The placing of your name constitutes a binding magical contract. There will be no withdrawing or changing of heart once you have been chosen. You must be completely sure, should you choose to enter." He paused, looking around seriously. "Goodnight to you all."
There was a great screeching as the benches were pushed back, and everyone began to make their way out of the hall.
"Where do you think Durmstrang is going to sleep? Because I'd be up to offering Krum my bed."
"Ronny, come on now."
"Don't be so eager, it makes you look desperate."
"And really, you should be looking for a more fulfilling relationship. Trust us, we're your brothers." Fred and George appeared out of nowhere on either side of Ron, half teasing and half serious. Ron's ears were turning a shade of red that Harry had never seen before.
"I am not attracted to men!" He shouted, drawing a few stares from the crowd that just made him blush harder. "I hate you two."
"Ronny! Why would you say such a thing?!"
"You're breaking my heart, Ron." They groaned dramatically. Harry smirked.
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Harry was enjoying her Saturday in the Great Hall. She had some Ancient Runes homework in front of her that was steadily being done in between people watching and chatting with Ron and Hermione. She'd only seen a few people enter their names into the Goblet so far, but she could guess that some had done it last night. She was, however, still waiting for Fred and George to try their hands. Harry had summoned Loki last night and told him their plan.
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"They want to what?" Loki asked.
"They're trying to enter the Triwizard Tournament, but they're underage. I think it would be fun if a Weasley were in the Tournament, don't you? All that chaos." Loki seemed to think about it, his finger tapping his cheek.
"It would be funny to see all their faces."
"Exactly."
"Okay. I'll see what I can do. Now, where's my chocolate?" Harry tossed him a few bars of Honeydukes chocolate, which he caught eagerly. "I'll see you later."
"Try not to get yourself killed."
"That's your thing."
"Hey!"
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The redheads in question suddenly burst into the hall, a crowd of older Gryffindors following them. Hermione rolled her eyes as they circled the Goblet.
"Ready Fred?"
"Ready George." The two of them stepped into the circle, stopping to turn and smile at each other when they weren't immediately ejected.
That, of course, changed when they were blown backwards into the middle of the hall. The two of them sat up groggily, rubbing the back of their heads. They froze, staring at each other. Fred pulled on George's snow white beard.
"You said!"
"You said!" Harry laughed along with the rest of the hall as they started tussling. Until Dumbledore broke them up, sending them to the Hospital Wing chuckling. Harry hoped that was Loki's intention, because she'd given him some quality chocolate.
Later that night, Harry was sitting in the same spot, but this time she was accompanied by the entirety of Hogwarts. There was a tenseness in the room as everyone stared at the Goblet, the fire seemingly angry as Dumbledore moved closer to it. It suddenly flared red, spitting out a piece of parchment that Dumbledore caught with long, thin fingers.
"The champion for Durmstrang is Victor Krum!" The hall burst into claps as Krum got up and lumbered into the antechamber. The fire turned red again, and Dumbledore named Fleur Delacour the Beauxbatons champion.
Everyone was on the edge of their seats, focused on the Goblet and waiting for it to spit out that last piece of paper. So when it did, Harry had a good look at what appeared to be three scraps of parchment stapled together. Dumbledore caught it, frowning at the names.
"The Hogwarts Champions are Cedric Diggory, Fred Weasley, and George Weasley." Harry laughed at that, watching as Fred and George turned to stare at each other in shock.
"Did you?"
"No, what-"
"I don't-"
"Go on, boys." Harry nodded toward the door to the side room, watching as they bounded up to it excitedly as the rest of the room was split between muttering angrily or rolling their eyes at another of the Weasley twins' antics. Cedric gave a good-natured smile and patted them both on the shoulders as they entered the room.
"Well, now we have our… five champions. I'm sure I can count on every one of you to give all the champions support, despite the extraordinary circumstances-" Dumbledore trailed off as the flames in the Goblet roared red again. Another slip of paper shot out of the artifact, floating down towards Dumbledore's outstretched fingers like it was deliberately taking its time. Harry immediately had a terrible feeling.
He finally snatched the parchment out of the air, staring at the contents with an impassive face, before looking up and calling the last name.
"Harriet Potter!" Ron and Hermione jerked around to ogle her in shock. Harry herself was staring dejectedly at the slip of paper.
"Well fuck."
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Mr. Heller: I'll try, thanks.
setokayaba2n: I think it's important to remember that Ron and Hermione are only 14 years old at this point. They're scared, and want Harry to stay with them both to make sure that she is safe and that they are safe, because while they might theoretically know that Harry is super powerful, I think it might be difficult for them to grasp that, especially in a dangerous situation like that.
Eragon135790: I like your thinking, but when I figured she'd go to Hogwarts because she wants to stay under the radar, and her knowing about other schools wouldn't fit with a Harry Potter that had been locked up and kept ignorant by the Dursleys for ten years.
Meep: I guess we'll see what happens with Gabriel. I have not seen all of season 15 yet, even though I should have. I'm working on it, but I keep putting it off like it's something I dread. I did it when Sam and Dean were being hunted by the FBI for the first time too, because I didn't want to watch a new episode and something terrible happen in that episode. Anyways, I'm working on it. I think the general understanding is that people don't choose their Animagus form, it just sort of happens, like a manifestation of a soul. I believe that a persons Patronus and their Animagus can be different though, as a Patronus can change. I think the leaf in you mouth for a month is more about slowly absorbing the parts of the mandrake leaf, not the mandrake leaf slowly absorbing spit, so I don't think there's a good cheat apart from maybe a sticking charm. I might look into the Winchester-Weasley idea, but no guarantees. Same for the Gabriel-Twilight stuff. I like the ideas about the muggle studies course, but I don't know how much I would include in this story, as neither Harry nor Hermione are taking it at this point. Maybe in the future, if I find a way to fit it in. Hermione was having a fight-or-flight response, and I think because of Harry's influence she chose fight. I think it's hard to remember that the person in front of you is one of your favorite professors when they look like a werewolf and are about to kill you like a werewolf might. I like the seventh year ideas, but I'm not there yet so who knows. Congrats for finishing Supernatural. I hope you're still in one piece.
Zasha the Cat: I went back to the part you were talking about, and I think it was just a typo. By some strange coincidence, though, I do speak some French. I'm not fluent, but I'm not a complete beginner either so... I also know some German and, weirdly enough, Gaelic.
Kris: I assume you're talking about the house where she was fighting the Poltergeist. Elaborate?
HufflePuffle: I didn't include Bobby's reaction to the Death Eater attack in this chapter, but you'll probably see it in a later chapter because Bobby loves to bring up all the crap that happens to Harry in the wizarding world when he's arguing how unreasonable it is that she keeps going back.