Albus Dumbledore was missing in action for the days following the announcement of the charges. Nobody was certain if he was just busy running damage control, or if it was out of shame that he failed to appear at meals. The near-confirmation of the theft that the Gringotts statement represented had left him bereft of respect in what he surely considered to be "his" castle.
The Potters counted their blessings; the less they saw of the old criminal, the better as far as they were concerned.
Life for the students was also surprisingly quiet in the wake of the Third Task. Investigations were ongoing — and various officials could be seen prowling around the school and interviewing various people — but the students were largely exempt. The school officials, however, were not having a good time.
The papers were reporting the occasional result, but so far there had been little of interest. Most felt that the Ministry was withholding whatever they found so they could pull a big reveal when it was all said and done. The result of the investigation into the presence of the manticore, however, did leak — and it had borne unexpected fruit.
While Bagman was aware of the illegality and thus was arrested, it was a woman named Dolores Umbridge who actually arranged the acquisition and delivery of the beast. When questioned, she admitted that she wanted the "half-blood and creature abominations" dead, and assumed that the "respectable pureblood champions" could deal with the beast once it killed them.
Umbridge was a bigot of the first order, and responsible for a great many bigoted laws in Magical Britain — and not a few murders besides. Needless to say, she was now in Azkaban, and no longer advising Fudge.
But that was, in the end, the only juicy tidbit that the students had access to. Everything else was being kept quiet. Would Dumbledore be charged? Would the other school heads face sanctions of any kind? What about the Ministry officials involved? There were no answers forthcoming.
And so it wasn't long before the students started asking a different question that nobody had bothered with as yet.
With no new information being shared, the discussions soon tapered off, and they moved on to the more obvious topic. This had been the last task of the Triwizard Tournament, hadn't it? They knew by now what had gone on in the graveyard, and they saw the run up to the disaster, but they didn't know the most critical factor of the tournament:
Who won?
===[~]===
It wasn't until almost a week after the Task ended that the Ministry finally got around to providing the answer. Rather than make a massive public spectacle, however, they wisely decided to hold the event after an extra feast at Hogwarts. This would allow them to limit the media coverage, or so the hope went.
It was quite surprising to see Dumbledore once more riding his gaudy throne at the staff table. On the surface he seemed as serene as ever, but the more astute among them noted the anger in his eyes whenever he looked at the Potters. It was also clear that even his own staff was giving him a wide berth.
Harry wondered how long it would be before the Board of Governors ousted him, especially given that he'd lost them their most famous student.
Maxime and Karkaroff made sure that there were several people between them and him at the head table. It was clear to everyone that they were refusing to be tarred with the same brush. It would not do to be seen supporting a thief.
On the other side of Dumbledore sat Minister Fudge, Madam Bones, and to Harry's surprise, Augusta Longbottom. The latter was temporarily appointed to the Chief of the Wizengamot slot after Dumbledore was summarily suspended due to his upcoming trial — and most expected that to become permanent. It was good to see Fudge finally surrounding himself with competent people.
For tonight's festivities, the Champions sat with their families. Harry and Fleur were at the Gryffindor table, as was expected these days. They spent an enjoyable evening chatting with the Delacours and Sirius, along with Hermione, Neville, and the Weasley twins.
And boy, were the twins glad they hadn't interfered with the task. They had never come up with anything to do, but if they had done anything, they could have become targets as scapegoats for all the trouble. A number of highly-ranked people had ended up in St. Mungo's, and they were all out for blood.
Fred and George wanted nothing to do with that.
As dinner wound down, Filch pushed a podium up in front of the house tables, and Fudge quickly made his way down. Silence spread through the Hall upon seeing it; everyone wanted to know who truly won the Tournament. Harry and Fleur just grinned at each other.
"Good evening!" gushed the Minister. "Now that we've all enjoyed this lovely feast, it's time to get to the important things! You've all been patient, and we can now announce the results of the Triwizard Tournament!"
Polite applause went up at this declaration, though Fudge seemed slightly discouraged that it wasn't greater. It was hardly surprising — while everyone wanted to know who won, they were also all too aware that the Tournament was, overall, a joke. As spectators, they'd seen very little beyond the First Task — and the Third Task sent them running for the hills.
"It seems we have a very unusual situation," Fudge continued after the applause died down. "As everyone saw, our Champions decided to work together in the last task, summoning their brooms and avoiding the maze entirely. Rather smart of them, I say."
The room laughed at this declaration. Everyone had seen the manticore, and not a single person in the room would have wanted to face it alone — or felt capable of it. Had the Champions gone into the maze, it was highly likely that more than one of them would not have come back out.
"Given that the judges were unable to see what transpired due to the unfortunate events that followed, we were forced to take and view memories from each of the Champions. What we saw astonished even me. I never would have predicted it!"
Fudge drew the silence out for a moment, watching as the students hung on his every word. It was clear that he hadn't gotten to be Minister by bribery alone; he actually did have at least some small amount of charisma, when he chose to employ it.
"Our Champions worked through the entire task as a team," he finally said, "and they ended it in a perfect tie, all taking the Triwizard Cup at exactly the same time!"
The applause that rose at this was startling in volume, though there was also a fair amount of laughter. Many of the students realized that the Champions had, in the end, truly made a mockery of the competition. And it was clear from the satisfied look on Fudge's face that he was perfectly alright with that.
It was probably because he could pass the blame on to everybody but himself; he was barely taking a hit, and much of what had happened as a result of the Tournament was boosting his popularity in other ways. It was Dumbledore who was taking most of the blame.
"Champions, come on up here!" he requested.
Harry sighed and stood, offering his hand to Fleur as he went. She quickly took it, and they were met in front of the podium by Cedric and Viktor. Cedric stood to one side of the Potters, and Viktor to the other. Only a few noticed that, by silent mutual agreement, Cedric and Viktor stood a step behind them. It was a subtle but nevertheless powerful statement of their opinion on the matter of the Tournament.
"Never before in history have living contestants tied the Triwizard Tournament," Fudge informed his audience. "After much discussion, we have decided that all four of these wonderful young people deserve the full award. Thus we present each with a thousand Galleons, and their very own Triwizard Cup!"
The audience roared their approval, and Harry and Fleur took their trophies — which contained bags of Galleons — with nearly identical eye rolls. Neither of them cared about any of it. They would decide much later, however, that the trophies would be displayed in a prominent location in their home, simply as a reminder of how their relationship began.
"And thus concludes the Triwizard Tournament! We hope you all enjoyed it, and that you made new friends with your fellow students in our visiting schools!"
Harry and Fleur couldn't help but chuckle at that as they escaped back to their table. They had no idea who all had noticed, but the Champions were the only people who made friends at the opposing schools — and then only barely (Harry and Fleur's marriage notwithstanding). The Tournament was a complete failure in all respects in their view.
The only question was whether it would ever be held again, but they both doubted it. With the exception of some of the fallout, it would likely be old news before this time next year. The cancelling of the Hogwarts Quidditch season was, in the end, more impactful than the Tournament itself.
To most people, at least. Harry and Fleur felt differently, of course.
===[~]===
Nobody was surprised when the following day's Daily Prophet announced that Hermione Granger was to be awarded the Order of Merlin, Second Class. She was one of only a few students who stayed to corral the dangerous beasts that had been within the maze. And she was the only one to have made a truly significant impact on that effort.
Some enterprising individual — probably Colin Creevy — had managed to snap a Wizarding photograph of her "dramatic transfiguration", as Madam Bones had put it. It was admittedly quite impressive; she had managed to transfigure a massive iron cage out of the front wall of one of the stands. As everybody knew, it took tremendous concentration to transfigure something so impressively large.
That, and absolute bucketloads of power.
Draco Malfoy would have been absolutely terrified that a Muggleborn was so much more powerful than him, had he been there to see it.
None of the other usual suspects in the school had made so much as a peep in her direction since the incident either.
The fact that she had done this to save a number of Wizengamot members, and while fleeing a rampaging hippogriff at that, had secured her the award with room to spare. The only complaint anyone had was that some felt it should have been a First Class award — though even Hermione herself disagreed with that. When asked in later years, she said it was the first time she ever truly appreciated the way Harry felt about that sort of attention.
For her part, Hermione continued to claim she was "just caging them up a bit", like it was no big deal. Harry had to stifle a laugh every time she said something similar. She had spent so much time snorting and rolling her eyes at him for downplaying his own efforts in the past, that he found it hilariously funny. Turnabout is fair play, and all of that.
The ceremony was to be held in the early days of the summer, and Harry and Fleur promised to be there with her, to her relief.
Meanwhile, the paper also continued ripping on the Tournament organizers, which mostly meant Bagman, Crouch, and — surprise, surprise — Albus Dumbledore. Few had known that the entire thing had been his idea in the first place. His reputation was truly in tatters, and it was only getting worse for him.
And then there was Percy Weasley, who was summarily sacked.
When Crouch went missing, his son Imperiused him into sending notes to Percy to execute on — and had Percy stuck to that, he would have been fine since he had no way of knowing what was happening with his boss. But when those notes stopped coming, Percy said nothing, and simply took over the department without so much as a by-your-leave. He was lucky they couldn't find a crime to charge him with.
To quote Amelia Bones, "It's not a crime to be a fool."
In another shocking announcement, Ludo Bagman — who had already been arrested over the manticore — turned out to be deeply in debt to the Goblins. In an unprecedented move, the Minister turned him over to Gringotts to face their form of justice. He wasn't about to pay Bagman's debts, which was the only other real option since the man was a Ministry employee.
Nobody would ever hear of Bagman again, and they would have been shocked to learn that he had been exiled to the Americas rather than outright killed.
As for the rest, the paper spent many, many words lambasting the Triwizard Tournament as a whole. The Tournament had been sold to the nations involved as a way to improve international relations through some friendly competition. Nowhere in that discussion had anyone mentioned that the Tournament would be potentially deadly to their most promising students.
On the Bulgarian side, their Champion — who was also an internationally renowned sports star — had nearly been maimed in the first task, and, according to rumor anyway, nearly killed in the third. Everybody was aware that the loss of Viktor Krum as their rising star would have been a huge blow to national pride.
Cedric Diggory had actually been maimed in the first task, and was lucky they had been able to repair the damage. While he was far from famous like Viktor, he was still well respected, and his father was well known in the Ministry. They had come very close to losing a highly promising young man.
And then there were Fleur and Harry.
While recognizing that they were truly good together, and that their marriage would likely bring them much happiness, the media nevertheless ripped everyone to shreds for seeing two so young forced into marriage. The Tournament organizers, they said, should have known better than to deliberately place a Veela in life-threatening danger.
The issue with Veela magic and life debts was quite well known, and that the Tournament allowed a Veela competitor was seen as a travesty — not because a Veela was unworthy to compete, but because it was so easy to ruin said Veela's life. It was seen as a major miracle that Harry and Fleur had come out of it with a bright future.
The fallout from that series of articles very nearly saw Madam Maxime summarily sacked from the Beauxbatons Academy. The people of France — including several local Veela enclaves — were very upset that Fleur had been so thoroughly endangered. Had they ever learned of the mild coercion that Maxime had undertaken to talk Fleur into signing up, she wouldn't have lasted two seconds.
Only a heartfelt public plea by the Potters that summer would stop the movement to have her ousted. They would ensure that everyone knew, firstly, that the Headmistress had accepted responsibility and sincerely apologized at the first opportunity (which she had, just after the wedding), and secondly, that the selection of the tasks was out of her hands. She hadn't known what they would entail when Fleur signed up.
People would still grumble that she shouldn't have let a vulnerable Veela compete, but thanks to the Potters' intervention, the matter would finally be dropped, and Maxime would keep her job.
But that was for the summer.
Karkaroff, for his part, came through almost unscathed, to Harry's disgust; he thought the man deserved far worse.
The one most pilloried, however, to nobody's particular surprise, was Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore, and mostly for the danger into which he'd placed Britain's precious Boy Who Lived.
At first he was lambasted for his lacking security around the Goblet, and then for his lacking common sense when assisting with determining what the Tasks would be. But then the unthinkable occurred: one enterprising reporter obtained a copy of the original Tournament rules (or rather, Amelia Bones sent them after accidentally discovering them during the investigation, though not even the reporter would ever learn that). It quickly became clear just how great Dumbledore's transgression had truly been.
Two factors were in play. First, the magic of the Goblet, bound to those original rules even today, was based on the laws of Magical Oaths and Contracts, and that branch of magic had very specific requirements. Put simply, nobody could force another person into an Oath or a Contract. If they could, the result would be chaos and the probable collapse of magical society as people began writing all manner of forced contracts for any number of nefarious purposes.
That meant that, in spite of Dumbledore and Crouch's proclamations, Harry was never actually bound to compete in the first place. Upon reading that particular article, Harry had nearly cursed his former Headmaster right then and there. Fortunately, he had far more sense – and far more self control – than did Draco Malfoy.
The second factor was that there was a proviso for cancelling the Tournament in case of a problem. Even had Harry somehow been bound to the contract, the judges could merely have declared the Tournament over, and then restarted it to draw new contestants, and nobody's magic would have been at risk. In light of this, that Harry was forced to compete was nothing short of a crime.
And it was a crime that fell solely on Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore. He was the one who had edited the rules, and he had handed out that edited version to the other Headmasters. And his version of the rules conveniently excluded that information –– and only that information.
Needless to say, questions were being asked.
Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore was in rather a lot of trouble.
A/N: I'm just not happy with this chapter. It's better than it was this morning, but certainly not one of my most exciting chapters. But alas, I'm done with it, my muse insists, and here it is, whether it's good or not. =)