Meet the Press
Rita Skeeter was ready for her interviews, the Tri-wizard tournament was the scandal of the century, not only were there four champions, but the fate of all those brave and noble champions who had fallen was revealed to be eternal soul enslavement to the ancient enemies of mankind. The wealthy and powerful of the Wizarding world were discovering their precious family magic had been offered as a sacrifice by their own ministries, diminishing those families by an unknown degree with every fallen champion.
The champions they had were the most touching group of heroes to paint as innocent victims in this tragedy, the brave and beautiful Veela girl battling against entrenched racism in French society, honestly any sin could be attributed to the French without invoking any English critical thinking about if they perhaps did the same or worse; it was always safe to blame the French. She really was heart stopping beautiful and if the French called her not quite human, the English could interpret this as not quite French and thus safe to cheer and sympathize for and with.
Victor Krum was a half blood boy whose rise to fame was legendary. Denied a place on his Durmstrang house team until a duel between prime and backup seekers resulted in one death and one expulsion, the boy had become the only undefeated seeker in Durmstrang history. Chosen as the backup seeker for the Bulgarian national team, he had taken over when the primary seeker refused to play during a dispute with the coach about being forced to the same physical training schedule as the chasers and beaters. This famously backfired when Victor Krum set a record for fastest snitch catch in European League play against Spain. Krum became a legend, attempts by the prominent families to dig up dirt on the boy had the opposite effect as Krum had no vices, and his marks from Durmstrang were not inflated, but rather illegally lowered so as to not embarass better born and connected heirs who consistently finished far beneath Victor Krum in both academic and wand based subjects. Victor Krum was the stoic hero, the self made commoner who neither asked, nor took any favours.
Cedric Diggory was the Hufflepuff golden boy. House Seeker and Quidditch captain, he had been prefect for two years and was openly considered a shoe in for Head Boy next year. His father was Department of Control of Magical Creatures head, yet Diggory had made a public spectalce of refusing those opportunities his politically powerful and demanding father had opened for him. Quietly brilliant, he could have had everything handed to him, but refused, and chose to make his slow and steady rise the Hufflepuff way, through hard work and the support of his admiring peers. There wasn't a single family from Light, Dark, or Neutral factions that would not quietly assassinate any of their own children's contracted marriage partner if Cedric had even hinted interest at their daughter. Even Rita could find not a single witch Cedric had been inappropriate with, his reputation as a gallant and charming young gentleman had witches from fifth year to fifty years old ready to slip some Amortenia into his pumpkin juice to turn that charming boyish smile into a more lustful gaze.
The last champion, Harry Potter, the Boy Who Lived was Dumbledore's famous answer to You Know Who, the one who defeated him from the very cradle, and the one who, as a boy, had made open war on the Death Eaters, making no secret of his intent to make those who took part in the murder of James and Lilly Potter face death by his wand rather than any trial by the notoriously corruptible wizagamot. To say Harry had been controversial was putting it mildly. The Boy Who Lived that existed in the Ministry of Magic public statements and Dumbledore's frequent speeches did not match at all the goblin raised, and according to some critics, goblin corrupted and violence prone boy who refused to follow the script the Ministry and Dumbledore both had for his role as saviour of wizarding Britain.
Rita started the day with the full intention of making a splash in her interviews, she had even used her influence, or terror she created, to brow beat the Ministry functionaries to drag the champions off into an unwitnessed broom closet for her interview. Close quarters, no witnesses, the implied intimace of the broom closet, she expected to crack the teenagers with relative ease, and get some truly scandalous headlines.
It turns out dragging the most powerful Veela Witch under a hundred into a broom closet without warning is a great way to find out that you have bisexual tendencies, and that a Veela who is surprised by someone she does not trust can ramp that allure up to levels a stone golem with occulemency would have trouble resisting. Rita was not at her best, and Fleur had a lifetime of dealing with people who had a very well scripted place for her that she had no interest in living. Rita had to admit, Fleur handled her like a junior league club reporter. That was fine. There were other champions, and her picture was certainly worth a cover anyway.
Victor Krum had the second highest academic average in Durmstrang for his year, so he was clearly an intelligent and capable wizard. His English when he spoke was slightly accented but articulate. He spent words however like they were painted with a two foot brush in his own blood. He didn't answer every question with a single word. She was lucky to get a single word, frequent a nod, shrug, head shake or frown was all she received. He did not come off as stupid, so much as stoic in a way the ancient Spartans might have felt was a bit extreme. As a headline generator, Victor Krum made a good bludger. He was not going to give her a headline, just a headache.
Cedric Diggory was a joy to interview. He was a duelist who enjoyed the duel, and he knew how to flirt, indeed, his innocent face, quick blush and gentlemanly double entendre made such a deadly combination that Rita found herself unable to stay on topic as she got too caught up in the game. Honestly his father was a blunt instrument; Cedric's mother must be the worlds greatest conversationalist, because Cedric did not get any of those genes or ability from his ugly and ill tempered father. Cedric made good, even great copy, but not exactly a headline. He was too careful to risk offending anyone. Worse, he was so smooth at it Rita couldn't even regret failing to trick him into saying something controversial.
Harry Potter's interview was different. The only time she had been that terrified in an ambush interview was with Mad Eye Moody. She had actually turned in her letter of resignation to the Prophet over that one, but the Prophet had what it called the "Moody Policy" where no letter of resignation would be accepted within three days of an Alastor Moody interview. As a fourteen year old boy, Harry Potter should not have been capable of generating anything like the murderous Auror's aura, but within seconds of trapping Harry in the broom closet, she gained the distinct impression she was the one caught.
"So, Harry, what do you think your mother and father, bless their hearts, would say if they could see you now, a Tri Wizard champion at twelve years old?" Rita offered.
"It's fourteen, and my mother and father can be reached at Gringotts for comment. My birth mother and father fought and died in a war that mattered, a conflict worthy of the risk of their lives, the battle against that murdering racist psychopath Voldemort and the deranged rapists, torturers, and murderers who are proud to bear his slave brand. They would be deeply offended that the reward for their sacrifice is the Ministry and Dumbledore choosing to risk my life to sell your papers and spread their lies dressed up as history.
Do you want a quote, a headline from me? Fine." Harry snarled.
Harry took a deep breath, and faced Rita. His green eyes blazed and he spoke with a depth of rage and contempt that had Rita pressing herself against the back wall. His green eyes shone, and the scar on his forehead blazed as his magic ran wild in the confined space and pressed against her so powerfully that she feared he might accidently blot her out without noticing. His words were captured by the swift dancing Quick Quote Quill even if she was too shaken to so much as twitch as he spoke.
"Ave hypocritae, filii tui morituri, salutant te.", since it is the goal of our educators and Ministry to keep us all ignorant and controllable, I will translate. Hail hypocrites, your children who are about to die, salute you."
Rita's photographer reflexively snapped the photo of Harry Potter giving the ancient Roman gladiator's salute with his wand blazing in his fist. The Boy Who Lived openly naming himself and his fellow champions nothing more than the modern version of the slaves who fought and died for the amusement of the rich of the Roman Empire.
Well, that was going to be a headline.
-Dark Lord in Detention
Barty Crouch Jr had never really cared for his father as a disciplinarian. The fact the champion for zero tolerance for the Dark Arts had Barty Junior as a son he sent to Azkaban for life pretty much summed up their relationship. Mother had loved him, and when she was dying had forced dear old dad to bend his principals and swap dying mom for living son. Dad's intention was that Barty spend his entire life locked in the basement, regretting his sins. Barty grinned. Now dad was in the back garden at home being a tree, and Barty was killing time before he was allowed to go back to killing people by being Dear Old Dad for the public.
Taking a sip of the Polyjuice potion in his hip flask, he smirked at the superior look Senior Undersecretary Delores Umbridge shot the theoretical "Minister for Magic" for his secret day time drinking. She would poop a pink dragon if she realized she was taking orders from one of the Dark Lords inner circle of Death Eaters, which made it so much fun to have the self righteous toad commit Azkaban worthy deeds to advance the Dark Lord's own agenda, all the while so sure she was standing up for everything just right and holy about her precious Ministry for Magic. Since there was nothing just, right, or holy about that corrupt den of incompetence she was functionally correct.
"Have you seen these headlines Minister? The Boy Who Lived is clearly mocking you, and the very authority of the Ministry. Dumbledore is just letting him get away with it." Umbridge fumed, puffing up like a toad about to explode from eating a firework disguised as a fly.
Barty knew the Potter brat was due to be bled like a sacrificial pig for the Dark Lord's resurrection, then slaughtered by the magic and wand of the Dark Lord himself before the adoring eyes of all of Wizarding Britain to announce his return. Still, while he couldn't kill the little twerp, and couldn't do anything which would inhibit his ability to be properly heroic during the challenges, nothing said he couldn't indulge in a little of the old screaming sadism, just to pass the time.
Turing to the Ministerial toad, who was toadying so very very hard, he put on his best impression of his fathers stern face.
"You are so right Delores, may I call you Delores. I feel we have become so close in the past weeks that calling you Senior Undersecretary like you were some sort of low level minion or flunky just seems wrong." Barty said as he put an arm around the nasty minded witch.
"I can't punish the boy, and Dumbledore won't punish the boy. You however are the Hogwarts Inquisitor, charged with the moral fiber of our students, tasked with correcting their steps when they stray from the path of righteousness and obedience. Spare the rod, spoil the child the muggles say, but we don't need rods. We have wands." Barty smirked at the Inquisitor knowingly.
"Minister, I cannot employ forceful means of disciple against the students. I had attempted to do so at the start of term, but Deputy Headmistress McGonagall made it clear if I inflicted physical harm or undue restriction on any student, she would transfigure me into a bedpan, and then lose me in the infirmary. It is illegal to use corporal punishment against students." Delores complained bitterly.
Barty smiled, and anyone who had known Bartimous Crouch Senior would know this expression was not the old ministers. Anyone who knew Barty Crouch Jr as a student or survived meeting him as a Death Eater knew and feared this smile.
"Ah Delores, here is the beauty of it. Potter is competing not as a Hogwarts student, but as a goblin. You will find that none of the regulations against corporal or magical punishment apply to goblins. You can even crucio the little shit and be within the law.
You are the law, Delores. You are the standards of good, of righteousness, of morality. Go torture that ungrateful little shit until he is too terrified not to heel like a good dog when we tug his leash."
Barty Crouch Junior knew he was breaking character, and before anyone he respected he would be properly terrified. This toad looked for nothing more than licence to brutalize those under her power, especially those more attractive, more intelligent, more gifted in magic than she was. Considering she was an ugly stupid toad who scraped by on ministry minimum OWL scores and not a single NEWT, that was pretty much everyone.
Delores Umbridge looked up at her Minister, and beamed like she had received an Order of Merlin from Merlin himself.
"Thank you Minister. I think Harry Potter's statements and obvious disrespect for authority is grounds for a very special detention."
She paused, remembering threats from other professors. "Minister, what if his Head of House objects?"
Barty grinned. "Goblins don't have houses, they have pens like all the other animals. I have decided that Mr Potter as Goblin champion shall be treated as if he has no House, thus no Head of House. Isn't that wonderful?"
Delores looked like she was having a religious experience, or some other form of intimate bliss that transformed her face for an instant into almost loveliness. Smiling like a cat that had just been escorted into the blind three legged mice holding area, she took several moments before her bliss backed off enough to speak.
"Yes Minister. It is quite the most wonderful thing I have heard today."
Harry Potter was on his way to breakfast early, some tea and studying was his routine on days they didn't fly early when he was waylaid by Inquisitor Delores Umbridge.
"Mister Potter, while I am sure your moral education by a group of subhumans may be partially responsible, here at Hogwarts we expect every witch and wizard to be responsible for showing the proper respect for the laws, traditions, and authorities of Wizarding Britain. You will come with me to detention, immediately." Umbridge said, a smile on her face that was honestly so bright it made Harry want to shield his eyes.
Hermione frowned. "You can't assign Harry detention for an interview the school forced him to perform, for a tournament he never joined but the Ministry and school are still forcing him to perform, simply because he points out he is being forced to perform."
Delores Umbridge puffed herself up like the toad she resembled as she answered primly. "I think you will find I can."
Harry laughed and patted Hermione on the hand. "Go tell Professor Sprout. Don't worry about it, abuses of authority by petty self-important bureaucrats was all the Ministry was good for when they set about losing the last war. I imagine they have had lots of practice by now."
Delores dragged Harry to her Inquisitorial classroom. The class was done in pink, and covered with magical portraits of kittens. Not cats, just kittens. They lazed and played in frames all around the classroom, and said classroom had nothing but a blackboard, a large teachers desk, and a row of five student desks.
She gestured Harry to one of the desks, then took up a piece of chalk.
"I will respect and obey all orders and officials of the Ministry." She said as she wrote this on the board.
Harry pulled out a piece of parchment and reached for his quill. "How many times, Inquisitor?" Harry replied, resigned to a missed meal and bad morning.
Delores Umbridge opened a gold case on her desk, and pulled out a very special quill. Harry recognized it of course, every Gringotts Goblin would. It was a blood quill, used for inking magical contracts in the subjects own blood.
This one though, had a large heavy seal worked into it, and Harry could see the tracery of runes worked into it that clearly added to the function of the blood quill in some fashion.
"You will not be using your quill, Mister Potter. You will be using mine. I think you will find that writing this line a hundred times will make quite the" She stopped and simpered in what she doubtless thought was a laugh, "lasting impression on you."
Harry knew a hundred lines was not enough blood to bother a teenage boy in his kind of shape, so he shrugged and began writing the lines.
As he wrote, Harry swore, as the blood quill began to carve the words into his own skin on his right back of hand, then forearm. Looking over at Umbridge, he saw her smirking, doubtless enjoying whatever loophole allowed her to physically torture children for the crime of not wanting to die for a public relations stunt for the Minister of Magic and Dumbledore.
Hissing in Parseltongue, he called upon his magic, to weave permanence into the curse of the pen. Doubtless she had some magic to make the wounds go away, to inflict the pain and scarring but not get caught. She thought to use pain to break a goblin warrior. She did not know the blood pits, and the way of the goblin warrior. Blood was what honour was written in, pain was what resolution was measured in, and vengeance, oh vengeance was measured by every drop of blood, and every moment of pain. Goblins kept accounts, they gave no thing unearned and they left no debt unpaid.
His marks would stay on his flesh until that account was properly balanced.
Harry looked Delores in the eye as he wrote, as the blood began to soak his sleeve, he rose to take his tunic off, baring his chest and arms so both of them could see the wounds writing in his flesh. She flinched to see them not sealing over and hiding, to see the lines march up his arm to his shoulder and onto his chest, as the blood wept from wounds that did not close, and she began to shift in her seat.
Harry did not look away, he didn't flinch. He stared at her and he smiled, teeth bare in the goblin threat display.
"Stop looking at me you disobedient child. This is what happens from letting those subhuman scum corrupt the morals of a human child. You can count the days until wizarding Britain has rallied behind a strong Minister for Magic, and finally puts your filthy Goblins in their place." Delores said as she began to channel the fear Harry's gaze was causing her to feel into the spite she felt from having to play nice with the subhuman goblins just because they controlled the wizarding banking system.
Harry spoke once. "Shut your mouth about my family and clan, or I will shut it for you."
Umbridge slammed her palms down on the desk. "Don't you lecture me about your packs, herds, or hives, whatever those vermin you call family call themselves. Just like you, they will be taught their place by force!"
Harry palmed his wand, but kept writing.
-Dark Lord Detention, part 2
Dumbledore strode down the hallway, having allowed enough time for Delores Umbridge to inflict enough intimidation on the boy that Albus Dumbledore's kind intervention will make it clear how much Harry Potter needs not only Dumbledore's protection, but his guidance. Dumbledore had put off Madame Sprout as long as he could, but if he waited any longer, the stout witch would simply blow the door off the classroom and rescue her badger.
He was whistling a happy tune and smiling in that most gentle and forgiving way that he chose to greet all wayward children who found themselves before him, in need of gentle correction and guidance,
for their own good of course.
What he found, shocked him.
Harry Potter was stripped to the waist, and his right arm and chest were covered in flowing script, Dumbledore could watch as the motions of Harry Potter's blood quill carved the writing from his page into his own skin.
Turning to demand of Delores Umbridge why she was using an Dark artifact whose possession was worth a thousand galleon fine, and whose use would see you sent to Azkaban, Dumbledore froze.
Delores Umbridge had her hands stuck to her desk, her eyes wide with fright, face covered in sweat, nostrils flaring in desperate heaving breaths, and without a mouth. Smooth unbroken skin ran from nose to chin without any sign she ever had a mouth.
"HARRY POTTER WHAT HAVE YOU DONE!" Shouted Dumbledore.
Harry snarled. "Don't make me lose count, I am almost done my hundred lines. This really hurts, so if I lose count and find I have carved a hundred and five, not just a hundred into my own skin, I'm going to be a little cranky."
Harry looked up at Umbridge, then blinked, as if he just now remembered her.
"Oh, that." Harry shrugged. "I told her to shut her mouth or I would shut it for her when she started talking about all the things the Ministry would do to my family to teach goblins their place. She decided that I would be the one to shut her mouth, and I think the transfiguration worked wonderfully. Haven't a clue how to reverse it, but I'm sure I can figure something out."
Dumbledore was shocked at Harry Potter's casual cruelty and found himself speaking before his mind could catch up to his mouth.
"I will snap your wand for this, and expel you. Human transfiguration as an attack is prohibited outside of sanctioned duels or self defense." Dumbledore said in unfeigned horror.
Harry laughed, a broken and bitter thing close to a sob. "I really wish you would. As the Host and my Headmaster, when the Cauldron of Dagda stole my life and magic for not participating, as my sponsor you would lose your life and magic in the same moment, so if you want to break my wand old man JUST STEP RIGHT UP AND DO IT!"
Harry blinked. "That is a hundred. If you will excuse me professor. I am in a lot of pain, and have lost a lot of blood. I need to go see Madame Pomfrey."
Dumbledore waved his wand, restoring Delores Umbridge mouth and freeing her hands. Shaken at the degree of bitterness, of not just anger but rage in the boy, and at the degree of cruelty his Inquisitor had inflicted with the licence that he had given her, Dumbledore was shocked.
"Harry, you should put your robes on. Your wounds are…..disturbing." Dumbledore offered.
Harry strode from the classroom, chest bare and blood dripping from his lines.
"Why Headmaster. I have nothing to be ashamed about. This wasn't done by my orders." Harry said.
Dumbledore heard the shrieks from the hallway and the rising voices as students coming back from breakfast saw Harry Potter carved from hand to mid chest. The words were visible. Dumbledore could not help but see them, even if he closed his eyes.
"I will respect and obey all orders and officials of the Ministry." The words carved into the flesh of the Boy Who Lived like an indictment, each drop of blood another bit of Dumbledore and the Ministry's moral supremacy falling away.
Dumbledore had been terrified that Harry Potter was turning into another Dark Lord like Voldemort. He had been so concerned that without his influence, Harry Potter was being led astray. Now Dumbledore cast his eyes down at the blood on his schools floor, listened to the shrieking of the harpy that he had invited into his school specifically to be the scourge that Harry would run to Dumbledore for protection from, and wondered where he went wrong.
"Scourgify." Dumledore said, and with a flick of his wand, the blood was gone from the floor. Not from his mind, not from the minds of his students, and not from the memory of Harry Potter. If the Boy Who Lived became as much of a threat as Tom Riddle, whose fault would it be.
When Delores Umbridge reached out a hand to grab him, to force him to pay attention to her, he windlessly banished her into the chalkboard. While she stood too stunned to speak, Dumbledore walked out to pick up the ruins of yet another plan to get control back of the last hope of the Light.
He had to succeed. It was for the Greater Good.