Chapter 9:
Dueling with Death Eaters
Harry kept his hands up where Moody could see them, careful not to make any sudden moves. He needed to keep the man talking, stall until backup could arrive or until Kingsley recovered. Whichever came first.
It didn't take much work to get the man talking. In fact, it took no work at all, as the man couldn't shut the fuck up to save his own life.
"I want you to know, I meant every word I said. You are in the right, and you do deserve better." Moody consoled.
He began circling and Harry imitated him. He kept his hands raised, but the two circled each other as if it were actually a stand off. Either Moody was actually worried about him, or enjoyed making him feel helpless. Harry assumed the man didn't know he was wandless, which he himself forgot in the heat of the moment just seconds earlier.
"So the secret to deceiving is to tell the truth? Who knew." Harry said boredly.
"Eh, pretty much. Can't be caught in a lie if you aren't lying. It also helps to get into character and roleplay the things you believe your character would believe." He said.
"So you aren't the real Moody?" Harry said, voicing his suspicion.
"Right you are, Harry. The real one is in that trunk over there. I respect the man too much to actually kill him like this, so I'll spare him and take him out the next time we cross wands." The imposter said.
Harry glanced at the steel trunk and it took all of his self control not to glance at the wand laying next to it, and more than he knew he had to betray its existence with his facial expressions.
Kinglsey had dropped his wand! The path through this crisis was now laid down for him. He just needed to keep the man talking.
"And why are you telling me that?" Harry asked.
"In case nobody gets the bright idea to go through my belongings after we leave, that when you return you can share the news. Make sure he gets to Poppy in time." The man said.
That gave Harry pause, and he actually lowered his hands in his confused state.
"Oh yes, Harry. You will live beyond today, and be freed within a few hours." Said Moody.
Harry glared a him suspiciously.
"Whyyyy?" He asked slowly.
"Because killing you will transfer the contract with the Goblet of fire to the killer, or killers. Promptly killing one or all of us, as it's preferable to coming back and taking your place in the tournament, only to be administered a dementor's kiss after the final task." He explained.
Oh yeah. That did make sense.
"Was it you who put my name in the goblet in the first place?" Harry asked.
"Yes indeedy." Said Not-Moody. "Based on your change in temperament, it didn't have the desired result."
"And what was the desired result, exactly?" Harry asked.
"Giving you the chance at real fame." Not-Moody said.
Harry stopped circling.
"I take it you understand my meaning?" The Death Eater in disguise asked.
"You have psycho-analyzed me and come to the obvious conclusion that I hate being famous solely because of my mother's death and defeat of Voldemort?" Harry clarified.
"Precisely!" Not-Moody said. "He wanted to give you the chance to earn your own fame, and get a better estimate of your abilities. To determine if you are, in fact, a threat. I must say, you have impressed."
Harry glowered.
He recalled how much of his survival in past encounters, with everything from Quirrelmort to Tom Riddle from the diary, came down mostly to luck or being underestimated. Now that he was a dragon slayer with thousands of witnesses to his feat that whole being underestimated thing was an advantage he would never have again.
"I take it you haven't yet come to appreciate the enormity of such a gift?" Not Moody asked.
"It's not exactly the best gift I've ever received. Last Christmas I got a firebolt from Sirius. You couldn't get me a spare?" Harry asked.
The man holding him at wandpoint guffawed.
"How the hell did Siri pull that off? He couldn't have gotten access to the Black vaults while on the run. Those Marauders sure did have their contingency plans and hidden caches well stocked if he could afford a firebolt with them." The man said. "Anyways, what's the time kid?"
Harry actually checked his watch.
"Three til eleven." He said. "I'm guessing the portkey you plan to kidnap me with leaves at eleven on the dot."
"You sure are perceptive, aren't you? That's right. Hence the conversation to help pass the time." The man confessed.
So it wasn't a monologue, but a deliberate time wasting. Harry wondered where the many Aurors swarming the school were, before he realized the man across from him was impersonating a veteran trusted by all of them. He surely would have waved them off, claiming he had this section of the castle covered with that eye of his. He probably also had the entire classroom warded to make sure no sounds escaped.
He really was on his own. His only solace was that his life wasn't actually in danger after this kidnapping, meaning Voldemort just wanted a meeting for some reason. Of course, that could have simply been a lie to keep him placid and obedient.
He had less than three minutes to escape, and that was a tall order. He wasn't sure if he could do it alone, but he was finally well and truly alone without any backup. If he got out of this, he would make certain to never allow that to happen again.
A flash of white light, a loud crack of snapping bones and Not Moody was sent flying.
Harry dove towards the metal trunk as the man sent a spell at Harry, despite him not having cast the spell, and he snatched up Kingsley's wand before he even finished landing.
Kingsley, bloodied and covered in hastily conjured bandages, stumbled into the room. He was breathing hard and his wand was unsteady, but he kept his wand pointed at the impostor all the same.
Fucker had a spare?! Was that legal?
Said impostor was already on his feat, almost as shakily as Kingsley, and weaving a conjured barrier of stone between them. It appeared before either Harry or Kingsley could cast their next spells. Kingsley's was another explosion hex, Harry's was the tried and true banisher.
The former destroyed the block of indiscriminate stone that Not Moody had conjured, the latter sent the remains of said barrier, along with every single piece of furniture in the room, hurtling at their enemy.
Harry saw Not Moody flick his wand upward and stick out his tongue. Harry ducked but no spell came towards him, instead Not Moody was sent flying backwards towards the far window. You could modify the ascendio charm to fling yourself horizontally or backwards instead of vertically? Harry would have to try that.
With another wave of his wand, Not Moody reduced the incoming furniture to splinters and stone into sand. He then ducked out of the way of Kingsley's next exploding hex which took out the wall behind him. The man didn't so much as hesitate before swinging one leg over the newly formed ledge and leaping out of the tower.
"Ascendio!" Harry cast on himself.
As if yanked with a rope by Hagrid himself he flew forward. He pulled his legs and arms inward to reduce his size and fly more smoothly, exiting after Not Moody a split second later.
"Potter no!" He heard the Kinglsey yell.
But it was too late. Harry was already falling after the man, and despite being distracted with wondering why this was the second time in almost as many days he was leaping down a sheer cliff after a would-be murderer, he kept his battle sense. He summoned all of the splinters and sand from above him and re-banished them at Moody.
With a complicated wand motion he then cast the matchstick to needle charm he had learned all the way back in first year. Only now he could, without having practiced doing so, cast it on many 'matchsticks' at once. The thousands of splinters of wood from the shattered furniture were now thousands of steel needles. He followed it up with a reparo charm on the remains of the conjured stone. A large repair to make on a normal object, but conjured materials took orders of magnitude less energy to repair than "real" objects. The result was a rain of sharp, pointy metal and a giant slab of rock falling directly towards Not Moody.
Not Moody raised he wand and vanished an enormous swath of the needles, those actually at risk of shredding him, and smoothly transitioned the wand movement into a cutting curse that cut the slab of stone in half. Red hot stone melted along the cut as the two halves fell away.
Not Moody landed lightly on the ground with an arresto momentum as a wide swath around him was pelted by the projectiles, throwing up dirt and grass and stone as if struck by a mortar.
His opponent didn't even wait for the dust to settle before running through it and away from the castle.
Harry cast the arresto momentum charm on himself, landing in the center of the ring of upturned soil and grass.
With one wave of his wand he cast the stone to clay charm, which worked just as well on soil and conjured rock, before banishing the soft, needle-embedded circle around him towards Not Moody.
"You're a one trick pony kid!" Not-Moody goaded. "And you can't silent cast worth a shit!"
It was true, Harry had been speaking the incantations to all of his spells thus far.
Not Moody slashed his wand down in silent banisher of his own, only his banisher created a downward force as opposed to one away from him and towards Harry. He parted the wave of earth and needles like the Red Sea, but now he was surrounded on two sides by the needles.
"Fulgur Maxima!" Harry yelled.
He put everything he had into the lightning charm and his trap worked. The steel needles surrounding the Death Eater like a cage of lightning rods drew the spell. The man screamed as he was cooked alive, the lightning jumping back and forth and around him in the semicircle, each bolt passing through him multiple times as they were pingponged between the many needles and Harry's own wand.
His smoking form collapsed onto the ground, his wooden stump of a leg producing most of the smoke as it was actively on fire. As was much of the grass in the mixed sludge of dirt, steel and organic material surrounding him.
His crumpled form moved, struggling up to a slouched position so as to point his wand at Harry.
"Accio." Harry said.
He summoned every needle in the ground directly up into the sky away from them. Then, he banished them all back down focused on Not Moody's center mass.
"Don't kill him! We need him alive!" He heard a woman yell from somewhere.
Too late.
The rain of needles finally did the job Harry had intended for them to do the first time he banished them. They each struck Not Moody's chest like individual bullets and shredded ever fiber of muscle, sinew of organ, and bone as if his torso had been put into a blender. A blender with chainsaws for blades.
Harry turned to see their fight had garnered quite a crowd. Aurors were sprinting towards them from all directions, with that Tonks woman and his own girlfriend having somehow reached them first. Had Not Moody known where those two in particular had been and fled towards them? His mind conjured all of the possibilities as to why, and taking Sue hostage to force his compliance seemed like the most plausible.
That would have been a stupid idea as his girlfriend was probably deadlier than he was.
"Damnit Potter!" He heard Auror Shacklebolt yell from behind them as he ran forward.
He must have been using a numbing charm to be running that well despite the mangled mass of an arm hanging uselessly from one side. He'd need to learn that one too. Perhaps his handy lightning charm could be modified to do it? He had just learned a lot about modifying charms in that duel and now the itch to experiment was niggling at him.
Auror Tonks slid to a halt in front of the dead man's body, kneeling down to check for vitals. She obviously found none so resorted to casting an arresto momentum variant known as the stasis charm. That was about as pointless as bandaging Sir Nicks neck wound.
"If somebody dies while under the effects of polyjuice, they don't turn back!" Kingsley explained.
Oh! Shit. Well then, they would have no way of knowing who the impostor was.
"Now we not only can't interrogate him, but we'll never know who he actually was." Kingsley went on, his nostrils flaring.
Thanks for stating the obvious.
"You uh, weren't briefed on recent events surrounding me, were you?" Harry asked.
Either the nonchalance in his voice, or the hate in his gaze, must have been wholly alien to hear from or see on a fourteen-year-old because Kingsley gaped at him like a fish. He might also be on the verge of going into shock from his injuries.
But yeah, Harry wasn't alright. That it took this man so long to realize and be horrified by him was a testament to the Auror's naivety.
The remaining Aurors finally arrived then, among them Madame Bones herself. She too slid to a kneeling position over Not Moody's body, right beside Tonks.
"What happened?!" She demanded. "He couldn't have been under the imperius?"
"No ma'am. He's an impostor under polyjuice." Kingsley said. "I recommend sending every Auror we can on a manhunt to find the real Moody. Start with his office and home."
Harry corrected him.
"Don't bother, he's locked inside of a steel chest in his quarters. At least that's what the imposter said." Harry told them.
Amelia nodded to him, then to two of her Aurors, who sped off back towards the castle.
"And I recommend sending you directly to Madame Pomfrey. Auror Tonks, help me frisk." Madame Bones ordered.
By now seemingly every single Auror had boxed them in, forming a three meter circle around the remains of the battle.
Bones and Tonks began to search the clothes on the corpse for anything at all, when something beeped. It sounded like a watch alarm.
"What is that?" Tonks said, turning the body over to search for the sounding object.
Harry felt his eyes bulge.
"Get away! He had a port…"
Tonks, Bones and Not Moody all vanished from the spot.
"..Key." Harry finished.
He took a deep breath through his nose and began counting to ten. At first silently in his head, but finished aloud when his anger didn't dissipate, but instead rose.
"Harry?" Sue asked.
His eyes snapped open and he looked at her. She flinched away.
"Did the impostor say where the portkey would take him?" She asked.
Harry sighed.
"To Voldemort." Harry said.
This is the only explanation of Voldemort's "plan" in Goblet of Fire that ever made sense to me. He was A, trying to get Harry killed. B, trying to ascertain Harry's abilities. C, couldn't kidnap him before the end of the tournament because of the magical contract. D, the tournament offered ample opportunity to do said kidnapping, and having Harry's trust in a teacher would provide the means to do so even without the cup portkey. E, got him plenty of information, and likely several side projects accomplished, with an imposter Moody in place at Hogwarts AND Barty Crouch Senior under his control.
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