The blast expanded in every direction and then kept expanding.
Inside the wall of fire and force, a sphere of water held around Kevin and Harry — Kevin had loaded it with shock-absorption charms before the explosion reached them. Without that, the pressure wave alone would have liquefied Harry's organs.
Kevin hadn't used his fire control technique to contain the blast. He'd needed it for exactly this.
"Harry. I'll explain everything back at Hogwarts." Kevin snapped the stone scythe holding Harry with a single blow, caught him, and kept talking fast. "Stay calm for now. Trust me."
Harry had pieced together enough. Kevin had done something to make sure Voldemort came back. He didn't understand why. But Kevin was still on his side — that much was obvious.
He nodded. Said nothing. His scar burned continuously, a white-hot wire pressed against the inside of his skull. Voldemort was alive out there in the smoke, unquestionably fine.
A gust of wind ripped through the fading blast, scattering the last of the fire and the hanging dust.
The graveyard was devastated. Headstones reduced to rubble. Earth torn up in massive gouges. Barty Jr. — the real one — dead somewhere in that mess.
Voldemort stood untouched at the center of it.
Not only untouched — fully healed. He'd used the chaos as cover, and whatever had been caved in on the left side of his face was now smooth and whole. He regarded Kevin and Harry with eyes like cooling embers.
Voldemort had been freshly restored. He wasn't yet what he would be. That was the truth. He'd needed more time, more ceremony, more victims — and Kevin had denied him the privacy for it.
And still, standing there in the wreckage of his own ritual site, he radiated something close to gravity. Like standing too near a furnace.
Dark shapes were rolling in from the tree line — black mist settling into cloaked figures who ran toward the graveyard. The Death Eaters, finally arriving.
"Tom." Kevin tilted his head. "Looks like our time's up."
He had no interest in staying for the second act. Voldemort's soul was intact, his Horcruxes were intact — there was no kill available. The mission was done. Time to go.
He glanced at Harry.
Harry understood. He already had his wand up.
"Accio!" The Triwizard Cup came spinning from wherever it had landed, slapping into Harry's palm.
"Don't—!"
Voldemort's Killing Curse screamed across the graveyard. Kevin threw up an earthen wall. The green light punched a clean hole through four feet of solid stone — but that was all it needed to do: stop it.
By the time Voldemort lined up the second shot, Harry's hand had closed around the Cup's handle.
They were gone.
"Kevin!!!"
The scream rolled across the graveyard and kept going, bouncing off the tree line, disturbing the fog. The Death Eaters who'd been sprinting toward the ritual site all stopped dead.
They'd felt the Dark Mark pulse. They'd come running.
Now they stood in a ruined graveyard, looking at their Dark Lord — returned from the grave, resurrected at last — standing very still in the middle of rubble, face contorted with rage, shouting a name into the dark.
"Master," said Lucius Malfoy, stepping forward from the front of the group. He sounded as though he couldn't quite believe what he was seeing. "You're... you're truly back?"
Voldemort turned.
Lucius took the Cruciatus Curse directly, without warning, and went down screaming.
The rest of the Death Eaters went absolutely rigid.
Voldemort selected two more at random and gave them the same. Then he stood there in the ringing silence, breathing hard, while his followers huddled as small as they could make themselves.
He hadn't just failed to kill Harry. He hadn't just failed to kill Kevin. He had been made to look a fool in front of his own resurrection, and now every Death Eater present would carry that memory back with them.
He'd wanted time. More time in the shadows. More time to build before the world knew he'd returned.
And most of all — why had Kevin helped? Why had Kevin allowed it? What did Kevin know that he didn't?
Damn that Kevin.
Space twisted and spat them out at the maze entrance, Cup and all.
The crowd had been watching the empty mouth of the hedge for an hour. The second Kevin and Harry materialized — two champions, one trophy, still on their feet — the stadium lost its mind.
"Kevin and Harry won!"
"They took the Cup together!"
Applause crashed over them in a wave. People were standing, screaming, some already climbing the barriers.
Kevin spotted Moody at the edge of the teacher's area. The color had gone out of the man's face completely.
Kevin moved before the cheering had even peaked.
"Expelliarmus! Liberacorpus! Levicorpus!"
Three spells in under two seconds. Moody's wand flew from his grip, his legs snapped together, and he was yanked straight up into the air, hanging upside down fifteen feet off the ground.
The stadium went from celebration to silence in the span of a breath.
Everyone stared. Moody dangled there, wandless, dark robes pooling around his shoulders. Kevin stood below him with his arm still extended, expression perfectly calm.
Even Harry looked stunned. He'd just gone through Voldemort's resurrection and this was somehow the thing that knocked him sideways.
Kevin could always be counted on to surprise you.
"Kevin." Dumbledore's voice cut through the silence, already moving, already certain Kevin had a reason. "What's this about?"
The other headmasters followed. Fudge appeared, face tightening.
"That's not Moody." Kevin's voice carried — he'd already charmed it to reach every corner of the stadium. "He's a Death Eater. He's been taking Polyjuice Potion to impersonate him all year."
The word "Death Eater" hit the crowd like a stone dropped in still water. The silence rippled, then broke into noise.
The fake Moody roared upside down, thrashing against the charm. Kevin crossed to him in three strides and hit him across the face to stop it.
Kevin's bag — the one that barely looked big enough to hold a change of robes — yielded a small vial of purplish-black liquid.
Kevin held it up, spelled loud again. "This is Veritaserum. Three drops, and you answer what's asked. No exceptions, no way around it."
The crowd watched, hooked despite themselves. Something enormous was coming.
Fudge felt his stomach sink. He moved to intervene.
Dumbledore's hand found his arm and held it there, gentle and immovable. Dumbledore had understood immediately — Kevin knew something, and stopping him now would mean everyone in that stadium knew you'd tried.
Kevin flipped the fake Moody right-side up and pried his jaw open. Three drops on the tongue.
The fighting stopped. The man went limp in the charm's grip, and when Kevin gave him the question, his mouth answered without waiting for his brain's permission.
"Tell us who you are. How you escaped Azkaban. Where you've been. And why you came to Hogwarts."
"I am Barty Crouch Jr."
The name went through the crowd like cold water.
"Over a decade ago, my father brought my mother to visit me in Azkaban. We exchanged forms using Polyjuice Potion — I became her, she became me. I walked out of the prison. She died in Azkaban wearing my face." Not a flicker of emotion. The Veritaserum stripped even that. "My father kept me under the Imperius Curse at his home for years."
"Last year, the Dark Lord found me. He ordered me to infiltrate Hogwarts, enter Harry Potter's name in the Goblet of Fire, and use the Tournament to deliver Harry to him."
Kevin pushed. "Who is this Dark Lord? And what did he want with Harry?"
"Voldemort." The name sat in the silence like a knife stuck in a table. "He required Harry Potter's blood to complete his resurrection ritual."
Kevin raised his voice over the rising noise. "Voldemort has been resurrected. Harry and I both witnessed it tonight."
The stadium ruptured.
Some people were already screaming. Some were demanding proof. Some stood frozen with expressions that said they'd always known this was coming and had spent years telling themselves they were wrong.
Cornelius Fudge felt everything he'd built — a decade of stability, of comfortable order, of "nothing to worry about, we're all perfectly safe" — beginning to crack beneath him.
He ripped his arm free from Dumbledore's grip, reached for his own wand, cast on his own throat.
"Nonsense!"
His Sonorus-amplified voice crashed over the crowd and, for a moment, worked.
"The Dark Lord is dead! Every wizard in Britain knows it! This is a fabrication — a stunt — a desperate attempt to sow panic and confusion!" He pointed at the dangling prisoner. "This man is clearly unhinged. The Ministry will take custody and ensure—"
"Aurors!" He turned. Two of them pushed through. "Take him."
"Fudge." Dumbledore stepped forward, and though he didn't raise his voice, somehow it carried further than Fudge's Sonorus. "We have a professor who has been missing for nine months. This man has information that must be properly obtained before anyone takes him anywhere."
The two Aurors stopped. They looked from Dumbledore to Fudge and back, and didn't move.
The tension in the stadium wound itself up to a pitch that could have broken glass.
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