17th June 1995, the seventh-floor corridor, 10:14 AM
The castle, in the warm steady light of a June morning, had the particular hushed atmosphere of an examination week. Approximately nine hundred Hogwarts students were, at this hour, sitting their end-of-term papers in classrooms across all seven floors. The corridors that were normally bright with the small chatter of moving students were quiet. A dust-mote suspended itself in the sunlight that fell through a high arched window over the seventh-floor landing, and a small distant scratch of quills from the precise direction of Charms could just be heard.
Harry walked along the corridor with his arms full of books.
He had been, by the instruction of Madam Pince that morning, granted permission to take six volumes from the Hogwarts library out of the regular circulation system on the grounds of his Tournament preparation—and the stack of Advanced Hexes for Magical Creatures, Encyclopaedia of Defensive Charms, and four further references was now balanced carefully in his arms with Jasper perched on his hood. The small golden Snidget had been with Harry every morning since the beginning of June, in the warm steady way of a magical creature who had decided that this boy was where he wished to be, and had been quietly looking out for him.
Harry was on his way to the Room of Requirement.
The Room had been his alone for the entire exam period. The others were sitting their fourth-year and third-year papers, and Harry—exempt by Tournament rule from end-of-term assessment—had been left to his own preparation until the twenty-fourth.
He passed the tapestry of Barnabus the Barmy and the trolls learning ballet, which had hung outside the Room of Requirement for approximately seven hundred years and showed, in its magical-rendered embroidery, the unfortunate Barnabus attempting to teach three trolls in pink ballet shoes the first position.
A figure was standing in front of the tapestry.
Tall. Dark coat. The familiar quiet attention of a man who had been examining the embroidered detail of the trolls' ballet shoes with the pleasure of a returning visitor revisiting a precise old favourite.
Harry's face lit up.
"Dad!"
Ethan turned.
His amber eyes did the warm steady thing they did whenever Harry crossed his vision. His smile of broadened into the unguarded glad smile of a man who had not seen his son since Easter and had been, by every visible measure, missing him.
He opened his arms.
Harry, with the books still in his grasp, ran.
He hit Ethan's coat with unbalanced enthusiasm of a fourteen-year-old who had not hugged his father in two months. The books slid sideways. Ethan caught them with one hand without looking. The other arm closed around Harry's shoulders and held him.
"Hello, kiddo."
"Hi, Dad."
"You look well."
"Tired. But well."
"Mm."
Jasper, who had been perched on Harry's hood throughout the precise small charge, lifted off in a bright golden flutter and settled on Ethan's shoulder with the proprietary affection of a Snidget who had been very pleased to see his other favourite human.
Ethan, with unhurried motion of a man, raised a careful finger to scratch under Jasper's golden chin.
"Hello to you, too, my friend."
Jasper chirruped.
Harry, releasing Ethan, stepped back. He noticed his father was wearing a clean travelling coat in Atid Stella charcoal, the silver pocket-chain across the waistcoat, the linen at the cuffs. Ethan had, by every signal, dressed carefully this morning.
"Let me show you the Room," Harry said.
"Please."
Harry crossed to the blank wall opposite the tapestry and focus his thought, visualizing the image.
The Room's door appeared.
He held it open. Ethan, with careful attention of a man re-entering a space he had not seen in twenty years, stepped through.
The Room had configured itself, by Harry's morning request, into a tall-ceilinged duelling chamber with worn flagstones, a fire in a high stone hearth at the west wall, two leather armchairs by the fire, a wooden table set with tea-things, and a wide open practice-floor at the centre with the target-dummies arranged at intervals along the east wall.
Ethan stopped, at the threshold, and looked.
His amber eyes was scanning the whole place.
"Aelia and I came here," he said quietly, "in the spring of my seventh year. She had been struggling with the advanced Transfiguration exam, and the Room arranged itself into a library for her. With the comfortable couch she liked, and the soft yellow light she preferred. I had not known the Room could do that for two people at once. We had—" he paused, with a bittersweet smile of a someone whose memory of his love had not faded by even the smallest fraction in twenty years, "—we had several afternoons here. Yes."
Harry, beside him, did not speak. His Dad rarely talk about Aelia, but throughout their occasionally small talks, Harry knew how much she meant to Ethan... just like how Luna to him.
Ethan turned his amber eyes onto the duelling-floor.
"Hexes for magical creatures. Final Task preparation. Tell me what you have so far."
Harry, with eyes sparkles with enthusiasm, set the books down on the precise table.
"I have the Pemberton-Bubble-Head. The Runic-amplified Expelliarmus. The Reducto variant with the precise lateral targeting cone. The Patronus, though I am not yet confident I can cast it under combat pressure. The Impedimenta, the Stupefy, and—" he paused, "—the Conjunctivitis curse, which Hermione found in a reference on dragon-control and which I have been practising in case the maze contains a large creature with eyes."
"Mm."
"And the Re'em wand, though I have not been using it."
"Right." Ethan's amber eyes focused. "Let see them in practice. You. Me. No rules. I will not hold back. You will fight as if your life depended on it. Are you ready."
Harry's chest tighten.
"Yes."
"Begin."
The duel that followed had no honest description that Harry was able, by the evening of it, to fully reconstruct. Ethan was, by every measurable register, operating at his full capacity. The spells came from angles Harry had not considered. The shield-formations were the layered architecture of a man who had been duelling at top level since he was twenty. The footwork was the Esther-household efficiency Harry had been training, but Ethan was fifteen years ahead of him on it and showed, by every visible signal, no intention of slowing down.
Harry was, by reasonable measure, thoroughly beaten.
He dodged. He shielded. He fired. He fired Runic Amplified Spells... all with full power of his concentrated will.
The Runic Expelliarmus was the one shot that worked.
It struck Ethan's shield. The shield held—but, by clear visible signal, cracked. Ethan stepped back. His amber eyes registered the impact with a pleased surprise of a father whose son had just demonstrated a technique he satisfied.
"Again."
Harry, with a exhausted grin, fired again.
Ethan, this time, deflected it sideways without breaking the shield. It hit the flagstones behind him.
Then it was settle with Harry panting heavily as he looked at the Stupefy glow at the tip of Ethan's wand, inch above his nose.
"Yield."
"Yielded."
Ethan lowered his wand. He extended a hand. Harry took it. He was hauled to his feet with an unhurried strength of his father's careful arm.
"Tea?"
"Please."
The tea-things on the precise table proved, on Ethan's careful unpacking from his case, to include an iced-tea infusion of his own preparation, two clean glasses, a jug of cold water enchanted to stay cold, a plate of Verrona's lemon biscuits, and—at the bottom of the case—a small bundle of ritual materials Harry did not immediately recognise.
They sat by the fire.
Harry, with his glass of iced tea in his careful hand, drew a long composed breath.
"Dad. Where are Sirius and Lupin? And Uncle Sam?"
"Sam is at the maze. He has been there since six this morning, with his Department team, completing the final ward-architecture. Sirius and Lupin walked down with him approximately two hours ago. Sirius has been—" Ethan paused with a wry smile, "—Sirius has been making a nuisance of himself by asking Sam every minutes when the Department wishes to hire him."
"Sam is not going to hire Sirius."
"Sam is, in fact, considering precisely that. Just not his Depart. Sirius does not yet know."
Harry beamed.
"Anyway. Sam, Sirius, and Lupin are at the maze. You may see them on the grounds whenever you wish. Sirius will be the most freely available—he has, technically, no formal Tournament role and is here primarily to be present. Lupin and I are coordinating Atid Stella's contribution to the surface infrastructure. Sam is the lead on the under-maze—security. Verrona is in Atid Stella tent on the east side of the grounds. You may find any of us in approximately three minutes from any position in the castle."
"Nice."
"..."
"Harry. The Re'em wand. May I see it."
Harry drew it from his enchanted satchel and laid it carefully on the table between them.
Ethan looked at it.
His amber eyes carefully trace the details of the wand.
"Mm. Good. The reason I asked—" he paused, drawing out from the bundle of ritual materials a vial of red ink, a brush of phoenix-feather, a circle of folded parchment with complicate runic geometric pattern, "—is that I have an intervention to perform on the connection between you and the wand. With your permission. It will not change the wand. It will make the connection better. Cleaner. More accessible to you under pressure. Of course, this only work due to the special nature of this wand."
Harry remembered that time when he witnessed how Ethan's made the wand and that final touch requiring a drop of his blood. "What does it do, Dad."
"It allows you to summon the wand to your hand by thought alone. You will only need to want it, and it will come. This is a ritual, took me quite some time to figure it out." Ethan let out a sigh remember all those hard work as Harry chuckle seeing his dad's rare frustration especially at magic.
Then Harry focus on the wand his eyes was burning with expectation. "Yes. Please."
The ritual took approximately twenty minutes.
Ethan drew the Runic circle on the flagstones with the phoenix-feather brush and the red ink. He set the Re'em wand at the centre of the circle. Then, he placed Harry's right palm beside it. He chanted, in a slow steady old Latin.
The Re'em wand, on the flagstone, liquefied.
It became, for the interval of approximately seven seconds, a blob of bright red ink that hovered above the Runic circle.
Then the blob moved, with an unhurried inevitability of a thing being summoned to its destination, into Harry's palm. It struck. It sank in.
Harry felt, in instant of the absorption, the connection between himself and the wand deepen—the steady pulse that had been with him since the acquisition during the incident with the big bad snake now extended, by the ritual extension, into the certainty of a bond.
A reddish sigil—an abstract symbol of wand—glowed at the centre of Harry's palm for three second before it faded.
But Harry could still feel it.
He held out his hand. He thought, with a simple clear interior intention, wand.
The Re'em wand precipitated itself into his palm out of nowhere.
He was holding it.
He looked up at Ethan.
Ethan was smiling.
"Congratulation."
Harry was mesmerizing by the magic behind this looking intensely at his palm, the fading sigil after the wand was summon.
Afterward the two resume their tea time.
It was then Harry suddenly remember a certain Re'em and asked, with the sarcasm of a younger brother: "How is Osian?"
"Lonely without his favourite human."
"Without his favourite human, Dad, or without his only human who feeds him properly?"
"Both, kiddo. Both." Ethan chuckled. "He actually came with me, you know. He is in the Atid Stella tent. Under Verrona's careful supervision. I am told he has been sulking, which is the Osian-register for I miss Harry."
"More Osian sulks because he had to leave his comfy kennel."
Ethan and Harry chuckle imaging the face of Osian right now as the Room's fire crackled at the evening register.
They then duelled again for another two hours.
18th June 1995, the North Tower, Divination classroom, 11:48 AM
The Divination classroom was at its ordinary stuffy June register—the thick perfumed incense, the hot of the afternoon sun through the round-window, Professor Trelawney's reedy voice droning at the front of the room about the interpretations of the tarot suite of pentacles.
Harry, at the back-row table beside Ron with Hermione directly behind them, was not listening.
His head was beginning to ache.
The headache had arrived approximately three minutes ago, in the soft dull way of a pressure-front behind his eyes, and was now intensifying with the inexorable certainty of a storm gathering.
His scar, beneath his fringe, was warm.
Not painful. Not yet. But warm. In a specific way it had not been warm at any previous point of the term.
He set his quill down carefully. He breathed.
An image came.
It was a clear sharp image of a dim stone room, lit by a single candle, with a fire in a hearth and a high-backed chair facing the fire. The figure in the chair was not visible—Harry noticed only the thin pale hand resting on the armrest, and the slow careful breathing of something that was barely human.
Kneeling at the chair's feet, in a submissive posture was a man whose entire life depended on what was about to be said, was the bald-shaven head of Peter Pettigrew.
"Master," Pettigrew whispered. "Master, I—I bring news. He has escaped. Crouch. I—I had him. I had him bound. He broke loose. I—I could not—"
The thin pale hand at the chair's armrest flexed once. The voice that came from the chair a small high cold voice.
"Crouch is dead, Wormtail. He died on the forest path. I have it from Severus's mind that the body has been collected by Dumbledore's people. Your failure, Wormtail, is that you did not prevent him from reaching the Potter boy in the first place. You allowed him to speak."
"M-Master, I—"
"Crucio."
Pettigrew screamed.
The scream tore through Harry's head like a blade. His scar, at the simultaneous instant, blazed.
He gasped. The Divination classroom rushed back.
His head was down on the table. His quill had rolled away. Trelawney had stopped talking. The entire class was staring at him.
His scar, beneath his fringe, was now genuinely aching—the low dull throb of an old wound that had been touched. He registered, that the precise small ache was not as bad as he was about to pretend it was.
"Mr Potter?" Trelawney's reedy voice was at the pitch of concerned theatrical attention. "Are you—are you well?"
"Pr-professor, I—" Harry let his voice waver carefully, "—my scar. It is—it is hurting, Professor. I cannot—I think I need to—the Hospital Wing—"
Ron, beside him, registered the false-volume of Harry's voice in one second.
Hermione, behind them, notice it in approximately half-second. "Professor," Hermione said, "I think Harry should go to Madam Pomfrey directly. I will escort him."
"I'll come too," Ron said.
"One of you, please," Trelawney fluted, "one of you—do not all leave my lesson, the alignment of the pentacles—"
"I will go alone," Harry said, with the effort of a boy whose head was in fact still aching. "I know the way. Please. I will—"
"Go, Mr Potter. Go."
He went.
18th June 1995, Atid Stella's tent, Hogwarts east grounds, 12:14 PM
The tent had been raised by Verrona's team approximately eight days previously, on a grass-strip east of the Quidditch pitch with a clear sightline to the Forbidden Forest. By the interior register, it was twenty times the size of its exterior and contained the Atid Stella command-centre for the final Task: communication arrays, extraction Portkeys, medical bay, Champion-monitoring stations, and Verrona's private workshop in the far corner.
Harry slipped under the precise small flap.
Verrona was at the precise small workshop bench, with Osian curled at her elbow, the enormous eyes closed in the pleasure of a Re'em who was being groomed.
She was using a soft cloth to polish Osian's fur.
She looked up.
"Harry."
"Verrona. Where's Dad?"
"He's not here Harry. About forty minutes ago. He had a call from St Mungo's. He had to go."
"When will he—"
"Late tonight. Possibly tomorrow morning. He will be back for the Task."
Harry registered this.
Osian, on side, opened one eye and registered Harry. He gave a dry humph, an acknowledgement-snort the Re'em when he was annoyed.
"Hello, Osian."
"Hmph!" Osian replied.
Verrona covered her mouth seeing this somewhat adorable interaction.
"He missed you, Harry. He has been sulking."
"Right."
"What was urgent?. Tell me. I will pass it on to your father."
Harry shook his head.
"Later. Thank you. I—I need to find the Headmaster."
"Be careful, Harry."
"Bye, Verrona."
He left.
18th June 1995, the gargoyle outside the Headmaster's office, 12:34 PM
"Sugar-quill."
The gargoyle did not move.
"Treacle tart."
Nothing.
"Cockroach cluster."
Nothing.
"Liquorice wand."
The gargoyle did not so much as blink.
Harry, with the exasperation of a fourteen-year-old who was, in the fourth minute of trying confectionery-passwords, almost out of options, ran his hand through his hair.
"Sherbet lemon. Acid pop. Drooble's. Fizzing whizbee."
The gargoyle moved.
The spiral staircase opened. Harry, with the surprised relief of a boy who had genuinely been about to yell at the statue, mounted the steps.
He was approximately halfway up when he heard small voices.
Three of them.
The heavy authoritative voice of Cornelius Fudge, the composed careful voice of Albus Dumbledore, and the dry growling voice of Alastor Moody.
Harry paused to listen.
"—I cannot accept, Dumbledore, that Crouch's incident is anything other than a medical episode. The man was ill. He was disoriented. He wandered into the Forbidden Forest in his confused state. He was attacked, very likely, by one of the creatures that live there. The simplest explanation, Dumbledore, is the correct one."
"Bartemius Crouch," Dumbledore replied in a gentle, steady voice, "was an Auror in his time, Cornelius. He fought in the First Wizarding War. He was not, by any reasonable measurement, a man who wandered into the Forbidden Forest in confusion and was attacked by some forest creature. He was Stunned, Cornelius. I have examined the scene myself."
"Then the wand-caster was the Beauxbatons Headmistress."
"..."
Dumbledore's careful voice took on the coldness Harry had only previously heard him use approximately twice in four years.
"Cornelius."
"I am only saying, Dumbledore, that Olympe Maxime has the physical capacity—she is, by every public account, half-giant—and that the Crouch incident occurred at the evening hour when she would have been—"
"Cornelius. You are arguing on the grounds of personal prejudice. Madame Maxime is the Headmistress of a school. She has been an ambassador-guest of Hogwarts since the previous September. Your suggestion is not an investigation. It is an accusation against a woman whose physiology you have a private discomfort with."
"Dumbledore, I take exception—"
"Professor." Moody's growling voice interjected with careful timing of an Auror who had been waiting for the moment. "Potter is on the stairs."
"..."
"Ah," Dumbledore said. "Come up, Harry."
Harry climbed the remaining steps with a silent flush of a boy who had just been caught eavesdropping by the Headmaster's magical-eye associate.
He emerged into the office.
Dumbledore was at his desk. Fudge, in his lime-green bowler hat which he had clearly insisted on wearing indoors, was standing by the window with the defensive register of a politician who had just been called out on a prejudice. Moody was at the far wall, magical-eye rotating, good-eye fixed on Harry.
"Mr Potter. What brings you?"
"Sir. I—" Harry registered with a gulp. "—I have something to tell you. Privately. If I may."
Dumbledore's blue eyes glimmered with contemplation.
"Gentlemen. May I ask you both to excuse us for a moment. The grounds, perhaps. I shall come to you shortly."
Fudge, with the bluster of a politician who had been about to leave anyway, swept out. Moody, with one final magical-eye sweep of Harry, followed.
Dumbledore turned to Harry.
"Tell me."
Harry told him. The Divination headache. The image. The dim stone room. The high-backed chair. The thin pale hand. Pettigrew kneeling. The high cold voice. Crouch is dead. Severus's careful mind. Crucio.
Dumbledore listened without interrupting.
When Harry had finished, the Headmaster sat for a moment. Then he said quietly:
"Harry. I should very much like to be examining a certain object. It is in the cabinet behind the far door. It will take about ten minutes. Please remain. Please—" his paused "—do not, under any circumstances, touch the stone basin on the low table by the window. The basin is a magical instrument of a sensitive nature, and—"
He looked at Harry directly. The significant look held.
"—it is not something you should look into."
He swept out.
Harry, alone in the Headmaster's office, looked at the stone basin mentioned.
The basin was full of a swirling silver substance that was not, by every visible signal, water.
A Pensieve.
Harry, with curiosity taken his mind, walked over to the basin and looked in.
The silver surface clouded. Three successive scenes resolved.
The first was the trial of Igor Karkaroff—Karkaroff in chains, weeping, giving the names of Death Eaters, including Severus Snape, whom Dumbledore (in the precise small memory) defended as a spy whose contribution to our cause was incalculable.
The second was the trial of Ludo Bagman—Bagman was charged with passing information to Death Eaters during the war, cleared on the grounds of unaware participation, the Quidditch crowd at the public hearing cheering as the verdict was read.
The third was the trial of Bartemius Crouch Junior, Rodolphus Lestrange, Rabastan Lestrange, and Bellatrix Lestrange, for the torture of Frank and Alice Longbottom with the Cruciatus Curse.
Harry watched the fourth defendant—the thin pale young man with straw-coloured hair and the wild eyes—scream for his father across the Wizengamot floor: "FATHER, I DIDN'T DO IT, FATHER, PLEASE—"
Bartemius Crouch Senior, in the Chief Warlock's chair, did not move.
"You are no son of mine."
He sentenced them all to Azkaban for life.
Harry, registering with the cold horror as he watched the thin pale young man being dragged away by Dementors.
The thin pale young man's face.
The same face Harry had just heard, in his Divination vision, called by Voldemort.
"My son, he is here, in the castle, he is here, I gave him— I gave him—"
Then a hand on Harry's shoulder.
"Harry. Come out."
Harry, rising from the Pensieve, stepped back into the office.
Dumbledore's blue eyes were filled with some kind of sadness.
"Sit down, Harry."
Dumbledore then explained what Harry experiencing was before reassuring him that his information was very help and leave the rest to the adult, once again, telling Harry to go back and focus on the third task.
18th June 1995, the Room of Requirement, 6:42 PM
The four of them sat with him. Hermione's quill was racing. Ron's freckled face was grim. Draco, who had now had Voldemort's name repeated to him by Harry for the seventh time in two months, couldn't help but showed a state of utter frustration.
Luna, beside Harry, held his hand.
"And Bagman," Hermione said slowly, "passed information to a Death Eater. Unaware, supposedly. That is what Rita Skeeter must have meant about Bagman being—"
"A Dark wizard," Harry confirmed. "Or at least the associate of one. Yes."
"And the trial. Karkaroff named Snape."
"Yes. And Dumbledore defended Snape. Said he was a spy."
"A spy for our side," Draco said quietly. "Which is the reason Father has been suspicious of Snape for fifteen years. Father has never quite trusted him. That is the reason."
"Yes, Draco."
"..."
Luna's grey eyes did the precise composed careful thing.
"Hah-ree. Does your Dad know all of this. Has he been told."
Harry shook his head.
"He is at St Mungo's. He has been since this morning. Still haven't returned yet."
"..."
"Anyhow, just as the headmaster said, there's nothing for us to do in this situation, just focus on the Tournament and end-term exams." Draco let out a cold breath.
All nodded and by an unanimous unspoken instinct, there was nothing further to say at this evening hour.
For the remaining six days, Harry trained. Sirius duelled him twice. Lupin duelled him once. He disarmed Sirius both times. He disarmed Lupin on the third pass, which Lupin pronounced the first time anyone had disarmed him in seven years.
24th June 1995, breakfast, 7:48 AM
The Witch Weekly article landed at Harry's plate on the morning of the Final Task. Harry's eyes rolled as he read the first line before giving to Hermione. He couldn't afford to care for Rita's shenanigans now.
HARRY POTTER: DISTURBED AND DANGEROUS
The Boy Who Lived is, according to multiple inside sources, suffering from a series of dramatic mental episodes including involuntary scar-pains and visions of the Dark Lord. A fellow fourth-year, T—— N——, confirmed to this reporter that Potter has been observed in the middle of his Divination lessons in the North Tower experiencing—
Hermione's quill, at the breakfast table, stopped.
She read the paragraph twice.
She looked up.
Her brown eyes were the bright sharp focused thing of a girl who had just figured something out.
"Luna."
"Yes, Hermione."
"The Divination classroom is in the North Tower. Skeeter cannot enter the grounds. There is no precise composed Hogwarts source who could have reported the precise composed scar-pain in the precise composed scientific detail of that paragraph."
"Yes, Hermione."
Hermione and Luna exchanged a bright mischievous look.
"Excuse me," Hermione said. "I have an experiment to conduct."
She rose and left.
The boys looked at each other across the breakfast plates.
Ron was grinning brightly seeing this. "Skeeter is in trouble."
"Big trouble, Ron," Draco added.
"Today," Ron said with a bright satisfaction, "is going to be a good day."
Outside the Great Hall windows, the morning of the twenty-fourth of June rose in clean cold blue brightness over the Hogwarts grounds, and somewhere on the Quidditch pitch, the Triwizard Cup waited at the centre of a twenty-foot-high maze full of things that moved.
The Tournament had three Tasks.
Two were complete.
The third was twelve hours away.