Merry Christmas everybody. I am back with a new story. As always I don't own anything in the Harry Potter verse. And as I didn't manage to get this ready yesterday, I will post the first two chapters at once, then in one chapter steps. This story is a longer one, so I will continue even after New Year. :)
Disclaimer: This story is M rated for a reason. There are sexual content and mentions in several chapters, but nothing explicit. I won't place warnings in every chapter, so just be aware of this while reading the story.
Hope you like this idea.
Change of Plans
Barty Crouch junior looked at the homunculus form of the Dark Lord. He had just been told the deformed baby's ingenious plan to get back his body, while also getting rid of Jasmine Potter, the Girl-Who Lived, his nemesis that had once before prevented his return by denying him the Philosopher's Stone. The plan was stupid. Utterly stupid, far too complicated and counted on major coincidences working in their favour. And he was expected to play the role of Alastor Moody, an old friend of Dumbledore's, for the whole school year without being busted. Nobody could manage that part. Too much could go wrong. A short period of time, yes, perfectly manageable, but a year? Impossible. But he also knew that currently he wasn't strong enough to defy the deformed baby.
If it were up to him, he would go about things a totally different way. Just how to make the Babymort accept his much better plan? Even in the small form, it was still the most powerful dark wizard of the age he was talking to. Perhaps he could use Peter to support his theories. After all, from what they had told him, he had stayed undercover as a rat for over a decade and was aware of the current happenings and his previous 'owner' had been one of Potter's best friends.
"My Lord, while I will say that your plan can work, there are several parts where others could interfere without us being able to stop them. There is also the matter of the magic involved in the ritual you described. From my studies I know that creating a body from scratch takes huge amounts of it. While, if the stories about her exploits that Peter shared are true, the girl is magically powerful, we have to consider that no witch that hasn't gone through magical maturity, which you of course know takes place at the age of twenty-one, could be at the same level as an adult witch or wizard. While overcoming the unique protection she got would be worthwhile to pursue, I doubt that that alone would give you what you require, which is your original body back, my lord.
"Next to that, your father was unfortunately for the ritual a muggle. But even if he weren't, the simple fact that he died decades ago would have made any magic remaining in the bones vanish. For a ritual of that strength, it would need the bones of a recently deceased person, as magic dissipates within the first two years after the death. My father told me that when he tried to get me interested in auror investigation methods. It is one reason why old murders of magicals can't be perfectly proven. The magic will be gone to identify the victim without doubt.
"The flesh of the servant part, while both Peter and I are certainly willing to sacrifice part of us to assist you in your resurrection, neither of us was that even close to being as powerful as you are to begin with and our magic atrophied over the last decade from disuse. Meaning, the ritual you attempt wouldn't give you the optimal results, which isn't acceptable," explained Barty.
"And what do you suggest instead, Barty? Because I won't be trapped in this demeaning form for long," hissed Voldemort.
"There are other rituals including sacrifices, which is necessary to obtain a powerful body as it becomes you, my lord, which can ensure that the magic is powerful. What we need are powerful components, untainted ones, which are aligned perfectly to bring forth the effect we desire. And I believe I know one ritual that can be performed much earlier than the one you worked out. What we need for that is a pregnant unicorn, the heart of a dragon and a female virgin with powerful magic," listed Barty.
"That sounds interesting, Barty, tell me more," ordered Voldemort and Barty did, in the end gaining the approval of his lord and the knowledge that his plan would be much easier and unsuspiciously realised than the previous one.
Barty sat among the students that had come to visit Hogwarts for the Triwizard Tournament. It had been incredibly easy to slip into the group of Durmstrang students. Thanks to a potion of his lord's creation, he had been de-aged back to seventeen permanently, both to better blend in with the students at Hogwarts and to heal the damage done to his mind and body by Azkaban and being held under imperius curse for over a decade by his father. It brought him back to full power immediately instead of going through months of rehabilitation first. It was a much safer position for him than taking out Alastor Moody. The old retired auror was tough and it stood to reason that Barty would have been discovered by Dumbledore in the long run.
No, this position was much better. He also enjoyed watching the pretty witches all around. He was a young man and he had been deprived the chance to find a wife and have a family thanks to his bastard of a father. He hadn't cursed the Longbottoms. He wasn't stupid, thank you very much. The reason he had been there was to deliver some papers to Frank Longbottom and to see his godson Neville. Few people knew it, but Barty and Alice Longbottom had been good friends. While their ideas of things sometimes differed, they had many things in common and enjoyed spending time together. Barty had never seen Alice as a romantic interest, she was more like the big sister he never had.
And he was the reason why Neville hadn't been targeted by his lord when he heard the prophecy. While Neville had been born at the end of July that year, Barty had managed to get a reading of his magical potential. Neville was above average for a magical child and would develop into a powerful wizard with the right training, yes, but it would be far below his lord's power levels. Knowing that, his lord had decided that the Potter baby was a more probable candidate to become his destined foe. Even if Barty couldn't see that, he wasn't high enough in the ranks back then to voice his doubts. Right now, he was the most competent of the loyal servants of the Dark Lord not stuck at Azkaban, thus he outranked all others.
He could voice his opinions much easier than back at the beginning of the eighties. He had taken his current position by slipping the Durmstrang group a potion that made them believe that he had always been a student at Durmstrang. Basically, a timely-limited potion-based memory modification. They would forget about him after a week was gone. More than enough time to enact the plan. This way, nobody would give away that he shouldn't have been here. He was perfectly positioned to collect information and act when the time was right. And thanks to Viktor Krum drawing all attention to him, the other members of the Durmstrang group didn't stand out.
He looked over to the Gryffindor table. There his target sat among her friends. Jasmine Potter. He wouldn't have thought that the girl was anything special. Sure, she was somewhat pretty, but her hairstyle and glasses didn't do her looks any favour. She also didn't look fully healthy for some reason. He would need more information before he could proceed. Nothing could go wrong with the altered ritual his lord had agreed to use. He was not going to risk feeling the cruciatus curse for failing.
Barty stood hidden invisibly close to the entrance to Gryffindor Tower. Thanks to having gone to Hogwarts when he actually was the right age, he knew the school very well. He needed to find out what was going on with Potter. And he needed to have the data before the next part of the plan started. Peter had already succeeded in capturing two unicorns, one female and one male. Even unicorns weren't immune to the imperius curse and forcing the two to mate to get the mare pregnant was easy. It was much easier to capture two of them to force a mating than capturing a pregnant mare. Those were protected much more by their herds.
It was early in the morning, tonight the Goblet of Fire would announce the three chosen champions from Hogwarts, Beauxbatons and Durmstrang. He had overheard the muggleborn from Potter's group of friends saying that she wanted to get to breakfast early today, to see if they could watch some older students put their names into the Goblet. Well, it offered him a window of opportunity. He only had to wait for twenty minutes before Potter and Granger exited the hole that was covered by the portrait of the Fat Lady.
"Honestly, can you believe Ron?" asked Granger.
"You know how he is, Hermione. He sleeps in whenever he can get away with it," replied Potter.
"But today we will find out who will represent the schools. This is so exciting! I mean, while the Tournament was really dangerous in the past, if Professor Dumbledore agreed to hold it here at Hogwarts, they will have improved that aspect," Granger babbled.
If only she knew how little the Great Albus Dumbledore cared about the safety of his students. The only reason why the Dark Lord didn't conquer Hogwarts during the last war wasn't that he feared Dumbledore, he had battled the old man many times in other places, it was the wards that were centuries old. Under the control of a headmaster that had learned how to control them for some years, and Dumbledore had been deputy headmaster and then headmaster for longer than two decades at that point, those wards could block every spell, even unforgivables. Before the Dark Lord couldn't force control away from Dumbledore, which was easier after he took the Ministry of Magic, it was too risky to attack in that place.
A nugget of truth, that Hogwarts was the only safe place left, had been credited to the wrong source, Dumbledore's personal power. Ironic. But that was often what happened when the Daily Prophet reported about events.
Otherwise, Dumbledore hadn't done anything of notice to keep the students safe during the war. Barty had seen first-hand how many attacks among students happened. The only thing that didn't happen were attacks from the outside. Hogwarts was safe because the Dark Lord knew to concentrate on more important targets first.
"From your mouth to God's ear's Hermione. After the last three years I don't have much faith in any kind of protections Dumbledore and especially the Ministry can come up with. And you have to remember, the Ministry is in charge of the tasks. They thought it a great idea to put hundreds of dementors around Hogwarts last year," replied Potter grumpily.
"You are in a bad mood today, Jazzy," noticed Granger.
"Can you blame me? Every year on Halloween something bad happens. Every year without fail. I am just waiting for the other shoe to drop. I just hope I don't get dragged into this tournament. I can just see it. Like two years ago, all the students would turn against me, just for something I had no control over. Some people still whisper about my parseltongue ability when they think I can't hear them," fired Potter back.
"Just ignore those idiots, Jazzy. They aren't worth your time," advised Granger.
Barty used the chance that the two girls were now only two metres away from his position to stun them in quick succession. That had been much easier than he had thought. He quickly scanned both for any kind of spells on them that would tell anybody where they had vanished to. Potter had a tracking charm on her glasses, but that was easily solved by leaving the glasses behind. Otherwise, his diagnostic spell showed that she had been neglected by her guardians. She lacked about all immunisations against common magical diseases. Granger for some reason had them. This looked like Potter hadn't even got the normal information that muggleborn got when they were introduced to the magical world.
From Peter Barty knew that Potter lived with magic-intolerant muggles. And for some reason he couldn't understand nobody had cared enough to remedy two obvious problems. Honestly, if this was how their world treated their supposed little heroine, then it was no wonder that the Ministry was such a shitty place. Well, he would act without others noticing that the two girls were gone before it was too late. He took out two invisibility cloaks and wrapped his captives into them, made sure that nothing could be seen, before levitating them behind him. He knew that Moody would still be in his room.
He had made sure that the old auror was kept busy with a small, cursed item that was sent to him. Knowing his modus operandi, he would first inspect that item and curse very thoroughly before he would go to the Great Hall for breakfast. By then, he would long be gone. None among the Durmstrang students would remember him or his face and just one evening wasn't enough for any of the Hogwarts students to remember anything significant about him. He hadn't stood out at all. Most of the attention for Durmstrang had been on Viktor Krum. Something he had counted on when he chose to infiltrate the Durmstrang group to gain access to Hogwarts unsuspiciously. And Moody was the only one that could detect the two girls inside the invisibility cloaks.
Barty went to a mirror on the fourth floor. He had found this secret passage out of the castle while he was a student. It was perfect to circumvent the wards that might inform Dumbledore about the kidnapping of his two students. While he noticed that there had been some kind of accident that made the tunnel break down, after opening the passage and walking down the path for ten minutes, he had an easy time creating an archway that let him pass the spot without problem. He undid the transformation, as it offered him the perfect deception where the girls had been brought to. And two sacrifices were much better than just one.
Voldemort looked at the two girls that Barty had brought to him for his resurrection ritual.
"I have to say, Barty, incredible work. I honestly didn't expect you to succeed this fast," praised Voldemort.
"Thank you, my lord. It was easy, as nobody was around when they went down to breakfast. And thanks to knowing about that secret passage that let me get around having to use the normal way out of the school, nobody should notice anything until tonight. I left a small compulsion charm on the Gryffindor portrait hole to not speak about the two of them until tomorrow," explained Barty, "Of course the variant that vanishes after it has done its job."
"Perfect. Now we have everything we need. Peter did his part, and the unicorn mare is pregnant, and we acquired a dragon heart from a dealer in Dublin," stated Voldemort.
"My Lord, I believe you should also know something I overheard. Did you know that Potter is a parseltongue?" asked Barty.
"Indeed?" asked Voldemort, "Interesting. I have to see where she got that ability. We will have to perform a heritage test on her after we held the ritual. Though from seeing her, perhaps getting her into a better physical state first would be best. I want her in perfect shape to power my new body."
"Of course, my lord," agreed Barty.
"My lord, I could go and get the necessary ingredients for the potions easily," offered Peter, "As we plan to hold the ritual on winter solstice, we have more than enough time to have both girls ready by then."
"Do that but use some of the polyjuice potion we confiscated from Barty's father when we captured him. We can't risk anything. This has to work out perfectly," warned Voldemort.
"I will even take care of not getting all things at the same place to hide my traces," promised Peter and took a pouch with galleons, which Barty had got from his father's reserves that he kept at his home and left.
"Put both girls in different rooms, Barty. I don't want them to plot their escape. We will move to another hideout when Peter is back with the potion ingredients. The less clues Dumbledore has to follow, the better," stated Voldemort and Barty nodded.
He levitated both girls that were still unconscious from being stunned towards the second floor, where they had prepared some rooms for prisoners. He would give both of them a sleeping potion to keep them unconscious. It was easier until they had relocated to their next base, which was much better secured than this one.