A/N- Hey guys. Right on time! Expect the next update on Wednesday next week and know you could skip the wait and read the next two chapters as well as continuous updates on Pa-treon right now. Since I now qualify as an unemployed member of society, all subscribers on my pa-treon are much appreciated. If you enjoy my writing, then please don't hesitate to support it if you can. For Pa Treon, you can remove the hyphen between Pa and Treon and Google it, then search for my username—Oghenevwogaga. Or you could copy the link in my bio and remove the spaces before pasting it in your address bar.
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"Confringo" I cast silently, and then chained it into the less dark variant of the spell, 'bombarda', and then 'diffindo' and then a half dozen other spells in seconds. The right against the acromantula had exposed quite a few of my weaknesses. It was why I now stood in the Room of Requirements, almost soaked to the bone with sweat but smiling as I cast spell after spell and made sure to avoid the return elements being sent at me. I moved to the side to avoid a tennis ball sent at me faster than any human could have served it, and speared the dummy behind it with a shard of ice.
Jumping up, I smoothly avoided the next trio of balls while nailing the one that flew at me with a sharp spike of ice that sent it flying backwards. Another set came and I avoided them with swift movements. The goal of this training was to strengthen my body just as much as I improved my magic. Physical fitness was important for wizards, just as it was for muffles but the truth of the matter was that things like running and weightlifting were virtually useless for us because our magic would far outstrip whatever benefits we gained from that and exercising hour magic would be a far better use of time. That didn't mean I didn't do any exercise at all, however. Exercise had mental benefits as well as physical ones, and I would be remiss to fail to reap those benefits for myself.
I sent the last ball flying whence it came and ended the exercise. A quick glance at the clock told me I'd been able to keep it up for forty minutes this time. I nodded at the progress and willed a pool to form before me. Nothing fancy, just a standard olympic length pool with the requisite filtration and subsidiary amenities. My tracksuit was quickly discarded in place of swimming trunks and I wasted no time in diving into the pool and beginning to swim.
As I always did, I allowed my body to move virtually on autopilot through the strenuous swim while my mind travelled to other thoughts. The first task was only two days away at this point. I still remained a rare sight in the castle, but it was more or less by choice. The news articles from the weighing of the wands had not been nearly as negative as part of me had feared. It showed that I'd made the right choice by more or less embracing my inclusion into the tournament. I didn't seem like a lying attention-seeking teenager who was lashing out against his mentor, but instead I seemed like a young wizard with the skill to fool a thousand year old magical artifact under the nose of the Greatest Wizard since Merlin who was keen to stick it to his competition. The patronus and the performance with Fawkes had appeared on more than one front page.
The most interesting article by far was the one on the Quibbler. I hadn't even recognised Xenophilus Lovegood in the crowd of reporters at the time but his theory that my wand had once belonged to Voldemort was dangerously close to the truth of things. Still inaccurate, but at least less inaccurate than the tales that the reason my wand had chosen to bond so strongly to me was because of me being a descendant of Merlin as one of the Greek papers, The Oracle, had claimed.
I turned away from the news articles to the feedback I'd gotten from the castle itself. The wide berth that had come soon after the choosing of the champions had disappeared over time. Getting kicked out of the house had turned out to have done wonders for my popularity with the other houses that weren't Gryffindor. There was probably some stupid justification for it, but it was far from even the bottom of my list of priorities which is why I quickly moved on to the first task.
A dragon was one hell of an opponent, and even with a strategy in mind, I was still wary of the beast I was going to find myself drawn against. If canon played out exactly as it had in the original continuity, then I would be facing the Hungarian Horntail, the most ferocious, and most cunning of all the dragons. It would not easily be tricked by illusions or basic strategies. That was why the present plan was to lure it out of range of the nest with a series of transfigurations that threatened the nest with their attacks and forced the Dragon to lift itself to protect its eggs. The plan even had an element of having the divebombing transfigured creatures following the dragon itself to bait it into distancing itself from the nest to protect its offspring.
Once it got far enough away, the next element was the Conjuvictus curse (or curses). The Horntail had exceptional vision to aid its hunting from the air, but the rest of its senses were shit for a dragon. At least according to Newt Scamander's book they were. That hopefully meant that only blinding it would be enough for me to move to my goal. Of course, I had other plans within plans to deal with things if any aspect of the existing plan went wrong but that was for the future. The task was only one of the things I had to worry about.
I also had to think about the aftermath of this tournament. Barty Crouch Jr. would see Voldemort returned no matter what. That was how committed he was to the cause. That made him dangerous. And even worse he was here in the castle. That meant there were a million and one things he could do to fuck shit up the more time I gave him to be himself. That meant I needed to deal with him, and the sooner the better. A tentative schedule was in the aftermath of the first task. The good news is that Mcgonagall had already expressed a desire to see me for the task and since I knew that she would be asking me to return to classes so that would be a useful enough excuse to explain away my presence. Now, I just needed a way to explain away his detection.
XXXXXXXX
"Mr. Potter, it's a pleasure to meet you" the strange man was the first to speak. I raised an eyebrow at the man before taking his outstretched hand and whispering "Likewise" to his greeting. His name tag marked him as Healer D'artagan. His accent marked him as French. Very French.
"I was asked to come here to see Professor Mcgonagall about the task" I said as I walked deeper into what had once been my Head of House office. Now, the space had been magically expanded and contained a series of stretchers while there were wha seemed to be a dozen witches and wizards dressed just like Healer D'artagan.
"Yes, I apologise for the deception, but our jobs become much harder when you know we're coming, you see?" He said.
"Your jobs?" I took the hint in his wording and asked the question I knew he wanted me to ask.
"Do you know what the h'insignia above my heart represents, Mr. Potter?" He exaggerated the I in insignia but I still got the message.
"The ICW. You're from the International Confederation of Wizards"
"Precisely, Mr. Potter. More specifically, we are healers attached to the Department of International Competition and Fair Play"
"So you're here to make sure we don't cheat?" I asked.
"To some extent. There will of course be other judges within the arena to monitor what you do there. Our jobs end once you get in there. What we're in charge of is making sure that you possess no non-natural advantages going into the competition" He said.
"So you're like an anti-doping squad" I surmised.
"Yes, that's one way to put it if you don't mind the muggle, how do you say, jargon?"
"Okay, so can we get that started?" I asked. The letter had asked me to arrive by 9 am and I'd gotten here a few minutes earlier. The door just opened to admit Fleur who was accompanied by a man that I did not recognise. A Professor from Beauxbatons, most likely. Her presence here meant the others would be coming sooner or later and I had little desire to be in this office with all three other champions. The space was expanded, but not so drastically that it wouldn't be cramped in time.
"Of course we can. I was just answering your questions to get you comfortable." He said with an offended air about him while ushering me towards one of the stretchers. I sat down as he gestured for me to do so, and he called over another woman who somehow managed to look just as strict as Mcgonagall with only half the wrinkles. By her side floated a piece of parchment and a quill.
"Beginning the medical examination of one HJ Potter" She said in a voice that sounded like she was scolding something.
"There are three stages to this. We will be examining your body and magic in turn. First, we will test for potions. That's easy. All you have to do is do us the favour of peeing in this cup here." He said and handed over a wide vial to me. I looked at the vial, and then up at him, silently asking if this was some sort of joke.
"Over the centuries, we have managed to streamline a process that tests for every single form of enhancement potion through the urine. We could do the same with blood, but wizards do tend to be more reluctant to part with that. If you prefer that, however, I do know a handy bloodletting charm. Won't even hurt a bit" he said.
"I'm fine with pee" I quickly refused and got up with the cup.
"Just go right in there" D'artagan said, pointing towards a series of screens set up in a corner.
I walked in with some amount of trepidation and waved my wand twice to cast my own set of privacy spells once I took a good look at the bathroom area. Once I did, I took out the cup and did my business while trying hard not to imagine the thousand different methods that could have been up in place to spy on me while I carried out the business. The good news is that I managed to get the cup too halfway full when I found myself unable to go any further with the fear of being spied upon rising to the maximum. I clucked and covered myself with my clothes before scourgifying the bottle and disinfecting my hands with a wave of my wand.
The door to the wider bathroom area opened before I reached out and I had to do that awkward dance of passing the door to leave while someone else was coming in with Fleur since neither of us were willing to yield to the other. When I handed the bottle over to D'artagan, Cedric walked into the room and was swiftly ambushed by one of the healers waiting near the door. The sight made me replay the memory of my own walk inside, and then I noticed that D'artagan hadn't been the only one there. Just one of many doctors, but he'd somehow managed to easily catch my attention above the others and ensure he was the only one I even bothered speaking to.
"Could only get about this much" I told him and handed over the half filled cup.
"Don't worry about it. I'll let you in on a little secret, kid. We don't need nearly that much urine. We used to have much smaller bottles for collection but people kept peeing all over their own hands and the bottles while trying to fit it in there. So we just decided that having bigger bottles would be better for everyone in the end and we could just vanish whatever wasn't used up in our tests." He said with an easygoing smile that settled most of my worries. I turned to his assistant and noted that she had begun drawing a pentagram out of chalk.
"Alchemy?" I asked, impressed.
"The potion detection spells have an alchemical basis to them. In fact, the detection of potions is the seventh use of one notable substance. Guess which?"
"Not a clue."
"Dragon's blood. Would have expected you to know all twelve since your headmaster did help in discovering them," He said with an exasperated shake of his head as the stern woman who seemed to be his assistant took out a flask from her own coat and began pouring out what I suspected to be dragon blood on the chalky pattern she'd drawn earlier. Once she did so, she took out her wand and began waving it across the urine sample. In a matter of seconds, light flowed from the cup before it coalesced to spell out my names.. "Harry James Potter"
"Well, that's enough of that" D'artagan stepped into my view of the woman. "The next test is a test of your magic. I'm going to need you to channel your magic into this" At that, he produced what looked lime a regular wand from his pocket.
"It will measure the, for lack of a simpler word, purity of your magic"
"Purity? I'm pretty sure Durmstrang practices the dark arts" I said lightly.
D'artagan collapsed into laughter.
"No, we aren't checking for anything so pedantic. It just makes sure you haven't made any non-natural alterations to your magic that would otherwise fail to show up in a standard potions test." I nodded and took a hold of the wand.
"Just act like you're trying to cast a spell through it" He said next, taking my hesitation for a lack of familiarity.
I silently followed his instructions and the tip of the wand glowed a pale white. He nodded like it was expected.
"Well, everything is as it should be. Magical purity of 97%, nothing beyond the pale" He said and I noticed that the parchment that had previously followed the other woman around now floated near his head and was taking note of his words.
"97%?" I found myself asking.
"No one has a complete 100% magical purity. You breathe air, drink water, and eat food do you not? All those things have some sort of effect on our magic so it never gets to 100%. To be completely honest, 97 is a bit on the high side but considering you live in Hogwarts of all places, and can trace your magical legacy back millennia, then it is no surprise"
"Wait wait. Hold on. What does my magical legacy have to do with any of this? Could you explain everything to me from the beginning" I pressed.
"Basically, things from without ourselves affect our magical purity. A muggleborn would be expected to have a lower magical purity than a pureblood by at least a few percentage points. The father back your magic goes, the purer it tends to be"
"I'm halfblooded" I cut in with a raised eyebrow.
"The Potter family has recorded history that dates back as far as Rome's first conquest of the British Isles so that tends to cancel things out" He replied with an easy smile, not caring much about being interrupted, it seemed,
"Like I was saying, apart from that. Living in places with low levels of magic concentration can have the same effect as having non-magical parents. You live in Hogwarts so there's no risk of that" He said, and I nodded. I didn't have a full picture or even complete answers to all my questions but it was clear from his tone that D'Artagan had no further interest in the subject.
He waved his wand and a series of screens formed around us. "Now for the last part. Strip"
"What?"
"Strip. All your clothes and underwear. You'll be changing into these after the physical examination" He said, pointing to a set of robes that seemed to reveal themselves out of thin air. They were red and black duelling robes with the Hogwarts crest on the left breast. All in all, they looked fashionable enough. They weren't made of the same quality of materials as my own robes but that was par for the course.
"You're not leaving" I point out to him.
"I'm going to need to examine your for physical additions and abnormalities" he responds.
"And I need to be naked for that?"
"Precisely"
I felt my skin burn red as I began to undress under his dispassionate gaze. Doom would make him pay for his humiliation.
XXXXXXX
"Ready, Potter?" Mcgonagall asked as we began the long walk down to the Quidditch stadium.
"As I'll ever be" I replied.
"Good. You were a scarce sight for the past month" She began, probing.
"I was excommunicated from the House, yes" I said.
"Yes, that decision has been overruled. If you would note, you wear Gryffindor's colour on your robes now. Your space within the dormitory has been returned and you should feel free to return to it tonight."
"Thank you for the offer, Professor"
"Professor, you call me. At least you remember that much, Potter. I understand that as Triwizard champion, you are granted certain leeway from attending all classes to pursue self study in preparation, but to attend no classes at all is far beyond the pale. Even the champions from other schools do not hesitate to take advantage of the resources available here at Hogwarts. I assure you that your Professors are some of the best in their respective fields" She pushed.
"Yes, Professor. You are right." I said, pouncing once she stopped for breath. My response took her by surprise, and I pounced on that with an easy acquiescence.
"I will join the classrooms starting next week" I told her, and she smiled brightly at me. Good thing I hadn't specified what classes exactly I would be joining. After a month to get used to Tom Riddle's knowledge, I was at a level that was easily beyond every NEWT student this school could boast of.
"There you are, Potter" Moody announced himself with his voice just as we left the castle's doors and hit the ground.
"Professor Moody" I said in greeting, knowing full well just what this man was.
"I hope you have prepared for this task, boy" He said.
I nodded in reply, remembering that he had some duty of making sure that I survived and somehow even won this thing. He must have been shitting his pants, terrified.
"Really? And what have you done to prepare to face a hell-"
"Alastor!" Mcgonagall's enraged voice cut into whatever he had been about to say.
"Need I remind you that you have sworn an oath?" She pressed.
"Like Karkaroff and Maxime haven't already broken theirs to prepare their students"
"Regardless, there is honour to being of Hogwarts, and I will not see that honour besmirched. Leave us now" She said, with no room for argument and shockingly enough 'Moody' stepped back and yielded to her authority.
"Have it your way, Minerva" He said and as he turned to me before he left, our eyes met. Brimming with curiosity, I pushed. Just as Tom Riddle used to. I caught the glimpse of what seemed to be a massive dog with fire at its feet as it ran through the air before I felt myself be thrown out of his head.
The look he gave me shifted from pitying to considering.
"Come along now, Potter"
The rest of the journey to the tent was spent in silence, each of us with our thoughts. Mcgonagall contemplated whatever it was she did, while I tried to decode what I had seen in Crouch's head. A dog? What had that had to do with anything. Even his words before Mcgonagall had stopped him. I'd heard the word "Hell".
The mystery entertained me until I reached the tent and my thoughts turned to dragons and a future of fire and claws to deal with.
I was the first to arrive, but the others joined in virtually no time-having chosen to use brooms to cover the distance between the castle and the Champion's tent rather than walking like Mcgonagall and I had. Now that I thought about it, it was more likely that the brooms wrote the expected means of transport and that Mcgonagall had taken a longer route to give us time to talk and me time to clear my head.
Bagman was the last to walk into the room. The Heads of the three schools had come in earlier, and so had the ICW representatives, two women with brown skin but naught in common beyond that. Where one had a head full of black hair that fell down to her waist and a svelte frame, the other was brimming with muscle and had blonde hair cropped close to her head.
"Ready for the Hellhound, everyone?" Bagman announced once he had a look around. The room froze.
"Ludovic Bagman!" The black-haired woman screamed in consternation while the Blonde one looked about to curse him even as the rest of the room froze. Cedric looked like he wasn't even breathing. Fleur and Victor had looks on their faces that showed they were trying to be shocked, but they knew. Me? I had no control over it. I broke out into laughter. Hysterical, full-bellied laughter that had me doubled over.
A/N: I think in a universe with things like Felix Felicis and strengthening solution, there has to be some way to make sure that everyone is being honest. Thus, we have the Anti-Doping squad. It's the ICW and not the British Ministry to reflect the International nature of the Tri-Wizard.If you're really excited about this, then you can skip all the waiting and read the next two chapters of this up on my pa-treon right now. And if you come from any of my other stories, please do me the favour of commenting which story that is.