"Let me get this straight in my head because I am starting to really, really feel worried about how stupid this all is; you set up an age line around the Goblet of Fire, in the hopes of keeping underaged students away from the Tournament, either forgetting or not caring there are dozens of ways anyone with some common sense and ingenuity can slip by and put their names into the Goblet, and lo and behold, someone is able to compel the Goblet to accept my name and my brother, all because you decided to not properly set up precautions," Harry turned and glared at Dumbledore. "Does that sum it all up?"

Dumbledore sighed. If he had been hoping to expect Harry to automatically accept the facts, he was over it now. "It is, Harry."

"Why did you not bother to put up proper precautions? Better yet why bring back the Triwizard in the first place, when there's enough information out there to tell anyone with common sense that the damn thing is dangerous!?" Harry snapped.

Dumbledore and some of those in the office who were fans of the old wizard, namely the Potters who'd come with him, bridled a little. "I wanted to improve international relations, Harry. Surely you can appreciate that. The Triwizard Tournament would be good for competition and morale."

"And to show everyone the levels Hogwarts, Beauxbatons, and Durmstrang have reached, huh?" Harry nodded, in amicable agreement to the surprise of Dumbledore, and for a moment the old wizard was hopeful the younger wizard was just accepting what he was saying.

But that was thrown out the next moment when the younger wizard snapped, "Surely a duelling tournament could have done that? Or any other kind of tournament between schools? And why focus on Europe alone? Why not reach out to countries like India, Africa, Australia, and Japan? Bring in schools like Castelobruxo, Salems, Koldovstoretz, Uagadou?" Harry purposefully kept out Ilvermorny from the list. "Why be specific enough to bring the Triwizard back?"

He had never understood why the Triwizard Tournament was even necessary, not when there were so many other possibilities. In the No-Maj world, there were international games of cricket, football, rugby, and hockey games.

There was the Olympics, a dream where No-Maj athletes participated in various competitions for medals. Why couldn't the magical world have done something similar, bring the various countries together, play Quidditch, duel or Merlin knew what else? What was so special about the Triwizard Tournament, when everyone with sense would remember the last one had been a blood bath? Were people just stupid? Sadly he was beginning to think some were.

Harry stared Dumbledore down, but the old wizard refused to reply. Harry sighed and turned to Crouch and Bagman, figuring these two idiots (he would have to ask his uncles for information about the two later, but for now he wanted to know if there was any way he could get out of this nightmare), "I didn't put my name into the Goblet, so why is it I'm being forced into this farce?"

"It's a magical contract, Mr Potter. When your name came out of the Goblet, it formed a link between your magic and the Goblet of Fire," Crouch replied calmly. He didn't seem bothered by the teenager's bad attitude and disrespect towards Albus Dumbledore.

"So my adopted son could lose his magic if he doesn't turn up or fails to take part?" Miranda shot up to her feet, her expression deadly. Only Harry noticed out of the corner of his eye that Lily and James looked miserable, but he paid them no heed.

Bagman quailed under her glare. "Yes," he said.

"Why would you do this?" Lucy snapped. "Binding magical contracts are dangerous. And what if someone attacks Harry, and he can't take part; what then, would he lose his magic? What made you idiots come up with this?"

The question chilled Harry, and as he looked at Aunt Miranda, he saw she was just as chilled and horrified. But as he looked around the room to gauge the reactions of everyone else, Harry was surprised by how Lily was deliberately keeping her gaze averted. James was no better.

Harry was curious.

These two hadn't said much, and they didn't seem concerned about him that much. So why were they here?

"They did it to make the entry into the Tournament seem more dramatic," Amelia replied for them, and she sent them a dark look for a moment before looking at her American counterpart solemnly. "And they came up with the idea of the contract in order to motivate them to take part."

Judging from the way she had just said that Harry guessed she hadn't enjoyed learning about that little detail, and she was so angry about it because such a thing could easily be misused - a contestant could sneak up behind a competitor, for instance, and knock them out and hide them away somewhere in Hogwarts castle and their magic would be torn away from them simply because they were not taking part without the magic behind the link giving a damn about the reasons behind it - and he could see how Isaac and Jasper stiffened in horror, while Miranda clapped her hand to her mouth in horror as similar thoughts came to mind. But it was telling she didn't care she was even revealing this in the first place. She was that unhappy about it.

"Motivate them?" Harry was unwilling and unable to hide his disgust as he glared at Crouch and Bagman. He turned away from them deliberately and focused on Bones. "You said a moment ago you were having problems with the investigation, what was that meant to mean?"

"That doesn't matter, Harry my boy," Dumbledore said quickly.

But Harry ignored him, and he focused on Bones. "What happened?" he pressed.

Bones had no qualms or issues with answering him, "Dumbledore and the Minister here, kept blocking my attempts to investigate, claiming they had it all under control, but I knew you didn't have anything to do with this, Harry. Not one little bit."

Harry glared at the two wizards, not even hiding his contempt. "You did what?" He hissed, so much so that the sound effect was almost….parseltongue.

Dumbledore heard it instantly, and he stiffened for a moment, wondering if he'd made a mistake all of those years ago. But at the time Harry's magic was incredibly low, and it was a while before he would learn for himself that the boy was a squib and was sent into the muggle world. At the time he had believed it was a good idea; one needed to only look at how squibs like Arabella and Argus were treated to see what it would do to the Potter family.

And in all this time, Dumbledore had never doubted it, not even when he had caught glimpses of the articles Filius and Bathsheda gushed over, and how Alastor praised some of the new DADA spells created by Harry Potter, but now he wasn't so sure.

Was Harry…the carrier of the Horcrux, or was it just a trait of his bloodline? A plan started to spark off in his head, of how to examine the boy to make sure.

"Well, you see, Harry, my boy," Fudge started in his blustering voice and his whiny tone was enough to snap Dumbledore out of his thoughts, "I didn't want the publicity of the tournament to suffer because of an investigation. And the Ministry had already suffered a lot of ridicule for the riot at the Quidditch World Cup."

And just like that, Harry formed his opinion of Cornelius Fudge, and judging from the looks he was getting from everyone, including Lily and James, respect for the pathetic little man was virtually nonexistent.

Harry turned to Dumbledore. "What about you, Headmaster? Is your excuse just as broad-minded when it involves a student in another magical school, and it should have been investigated regardless of how it looked like to the public?"

Fudge's expression became full of confusion, it looked so right at home on the gormless twerp's face that Harry felt it should be permanently etched there for all time. For the more intelligent members of the group, his meaning struck home.

Dumbledore was not particularly happy. "Harry, you don't understand."

"Oh, I do; someone put my name into the Goblet of Fire, and at the same time someone put my brother's name in too. My brother has enemies, and they clearly feel that the pair of us should die," the more Harry reasoned it out the more convinced he was he knew what Dumbledore had in mind, and when he did, he shook his head. "You're using us as bait."

For the last few minutes, Harry had been considering why someone would go to the trouble of putting the names of two underage wizards into the Goblet of Fire, and why Dumbledore wasn't doing anything to get them out when he likely had the power since Harry couldn't believe the old wizard was stupid enough to not have something that could act as a contingency in case something went wrong.

Unless of course, it was all a plan the old man already had in mind. Was that why he'd set up the Triwizard Tournament again ignoring the dangers it posed, and how many had died in the past? Was that it, he wanted to test the Potter siblings? No, Harry didn't believe that; Dumbledore hadn't interfered with his life, any more than he had with Holly's.

No.

Something told Harry that Dumbledore was just as taken aback by these events as everyone else. If not more so. No, he had the feeling when his own name came out, the old wizard was just stunned. But why Dumbledore would use them for bait….Harry didn't know.

Dumbledore's eyes widened in shock while the body language and expressions from everyone else in the room turned noticeably more hostile. "No, Harry, that's not true," Dumbledore tried to deny it quickly.

Harry wasn't in the mood to argue with this. He had just gotten confirmation right there and then. He turned to Amelia. "Are you sure there's no way I can get out of this tournament?"

"Yes, I'd like to know that as well," the President of the MACUSA declared, looking between Madam Bones and her own Head of the DMLE speculatively. "Mr Potter here is an MACUSA citizen who hasn't stepped foot in Britain for a long time, and surely his guardians could prevent him from taking part, even if his parents don't seem interested," she added, sparing a glance towards Lily and James.

"That's not true," Lily glared at the President, uncaring if she was speaking disrespectfully to the leader of a powerful magical community. At the same time, she was now deliberately averting her eyes away from her son.

"We tried to get both Charlus and Harry out of the Tournament," it was noted by several of the people in the office like Dumbledore and Isaac and the others that James put Charlus first, but whether that was deliberate because Lily and James hadn't seen Holly and Harry as theirs, or it was a habit, nobody asked, "but they told us that they were bound by a magically binding contract each."

"Do you want to know why? Because whoever put the names of the Potter twins into the Goblet of Fire, they knew what they were doing. Somehow they used the twin's blood," Amelia said grimly.

-8-

An hour later…

"Are you serious?" Melissa asked in horror. All around them, Harry's friends and cousins attending Ilvermorny were just as horrified. Harry had related to them the whole story.

"Yeah," Harry said grimly.

"But how?"

"I asked Bones that same question…"

-8-

An hour earlier…

"Our blood?" Harry was horrified.

Isaac, Jasper, and Miranda had given him and Holly a good education in how magical contracts worked, and while contracts were hard to break there were exceptions. Blood was not one of them. With the blood, whoever put the Potter's names into the Goblet of Fire had been smart enough to shrink the chances of anyone trying to get him and Charlus out of the Tournament.

Now it was impossible.

"Our blood? How is that possible?" Harry whispered while Miranda gasped. Isaac slammed his fist on the arm of his chair, and looked ready to leapt to his feet and start blasting the walls to pieces, while Jasper looked at Fudge and Dumbledore with contempt; Fudge because the little fool had slowed so much down, and Dumbledore because of how poorly he had warded the Goblet of Fire. If he had done a better job, this would have been prevented long before the magic of the blood touched the Goblet of Fire.

Amelia shook her head, grimly. "We don't know. We tried to find out if the blood was somehow faked or just came from Charlus Potter. But because certain people kept interfering in the investigations," she glared at Fudge and Dumbledore before turning to Harry and his family, "getting answers was harder than we had hoped. When we discovered blood was used, our investigations took on a brand new meaning."

Harry was still taking in what he'd heard. He was having a problem with working out how his blood ended up in the mix. "I don't know how that happened," he shook his head.

And he sighed.

There was no way out….

-8-

With Harry and Melissa...

-8-

"So, you're stuck in the Triwizard Tournament then?" Melissa asked grimly as they sat in the common room of the Horned Serpent maze when they were both on their own.

The pair of them were both sorted into Horned Serpent, though that was mostly down to the fact Melissa, like her aunt, had been eligible for Pukwudgie, Wampus and Thunderbird and since they'd always been so close, Melissa had chosen Horned Serpent.

"Unfortunately," Harry sighed and settled down on the couch.

"What did the President say?"

Harry sighed again, "There was little she could do. She made it clear to Fudge what she thought of him, though," he chuckled at the memory, "Fudge has spent the last few weeks putting up blocks around Amelia Bones's investigation. That was his first mistake. His second mistake was to delay their visit to the MACUSA to let me and my family know," he finished looking down into her eyes.

"He stopped them coming to speak to you?" Melissa could not believe what she was hearing, "Why would he do something so stupid? What was he going to do, wait until the First Task was about to start and then come and get you?"

"No, I think he was hoping for better publicity more than anything else, Fudge kept saying that he didn't want the reputation of the Ministry to be tarnished by the poor security, even if it was Dumbledore's call," Harry closed his eyes, "But what I don't get is how they got hold of my blood. I know that magical hospitals dispose of the blood samples of children born there so they are not misused. The record is sent off the Ministry, and the magical bank, and that's it. Droplets of blood are taken just before the birth. I know that as well, but I don't get how they got my blood, never mind who did it."

"Could it have been just Charlus Potter's blood? I mean if it all took place in Britain, then he would have the easiest person to get the blood from?"

"No. I thought of that. Bones did, too. Once she was given the slips with our names on them, she took them for analysis. The blood comes from two different people, twins."

"It seems even on other levels, you and Charlus are destined to be different," Melissa tried to lighten the mood.

Harry just smiled at her, but he looked away.

Melissa kissed him gently. The pair of them were dating now, and she was terrified for his safety. "What are you going to do?"

Harry rubbed his face. "There's nothing I can do," he came close to yawning. Right now he just wanted to sleep and look at this from a fresher perspective. "Headmaster Fontaine had no choice but to make preparations to go to Hogwarts."

Melissa blinked in surprise. "You mean you can't just go to Hogwarts on the days of the Task?"

In her opinion, Harry should not even go near the same school as his brother, and she didn't like the thought of him being in the same school as a Headmaster who was so deluded he would delay an investigation to stop anyone from discovering his plans.

Harry believed the same thing. "I asked that. I didn't want to be separated from Ilvermorny, from you, from all of it. I didn't want to go back to that fucking country."

"But?" Melissa pressed.

Harry sighed, "According to the rules of the Triwizard Tournament, all schools involved are to send a group of students and teachers to the hosting school," he explained, sounding like he was repeating something verbatim.

"But surely they could make an exception now?"

"No," Harry shook his head. "They won't. We tried, but the rules are binding. Fontaine's making the arrangements already, and he will make the announcement tomorrow morning at breakfast."

"Fuck!" Melissa spat and looked away in disgust, Harry held her in his arms and sighed.

"I'm not looking forward to speaking to Holly later," Harry whispered. "I think someone will tell her the truth."

"How do you think she'll react?" Melissa whispered.

Harry closed his eyes, knowing Holly was going to panic and be angry with their biological parents. "Not happy," he replied.

Melissa turned her head and looked at him seriously. "Harry, what happened with your parents?" She asked. "You told me they'd come to Ilvermorny, that they were in Fontaine's office? But what happened with them?"

Harry closed his eyes so she wouldn't see the deep sadness in them….

-8-

An hour earlier…

-8-

The meeting in Headmaster Fontaine's office was coming to a close. Harry, Miranda, Isaac and Jasper were not happy with what they'd learned. But as they were leaving, Harry noticed that Lily and James, far from happy with everything that had happened, were looking both angry and sad, but ultimately he was surprised when he saw that Lily looked like she wanted to say something, but she averted her eyes and went on her way.

James never once looked at him, but Harry thought he caught genuine regret on the older man's face.

To Harry, the man was a coward for refusing to accept responsibility.