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Harry Potter: Unleashed - Chapter 29 - Making a Stand

Author's Note:

There are a few chapters of this story that I haven't posted yet, because a content thief has been copying my work and posting it on another site under their own name.

I don't normally recruit the internet for help in such matters, but my DMCA takedown notice has been ignored by the website in question. If some netizens could visit a story named Harry Potter Breaking Free by mystic_verse on w-e-b-n-o-v-e-l-.-c-o-m, and report the story in question, doing so might help me out.

Anyways, on to the chapter.

After rising from bed and donning her habitual robe, Appoline strolled down to the kitchen, where she called out a good morning to her live in chef Mrs. Christianson. A chef worth her weight in gold, as the woman immediately produced a plate of porridge with sliced up fruit, along with some scrambled egg prepared exactly the way she liked it…

Bliss.

As the French Ministry was currently at peace with itself (almost unheard of), Adrien was enjoying a very rare full day off… which of course meant that the man was still in bed. While Appoline actually enjoyed mornings, she and her husband did not have that character trait in common, which is why she was in the habit of using her feminine wiles to get the man both up and moving most mornings (a daily routine that neither of them would've interfered with even if doing so were possible)…

On the other hand, when her husband was given the rare opportunity to recharge his batteries the good old fashioned way, Appoline wasn't so cruel as to interfere with the process.

No. Rather than pester her husband, Appoline moved out onto the veranda, where she enjoyed the brisk morning air, ate her breakfast, sipped some coffee, and smiled her way through a moment of nearly perfect contentment.

While matters over at Hogwarts had a tendency to cause her low level (but persistent) anxiety, Appoline Delacour was still enjoying some of the most fulfilling days of her whole entire life, and she knew exactly why. She was the CEO/Lead Developer for an extremely lucrative company now, and since she was being assisted by the Potter family's accountant Goblin Silverclaw, she had the freedom to take part at basically her own convenience.

Which she did, because it was all so very interesting.

Watching Harry's wonderful magical creations transform from rare magical artifacts into commercially available products and then grow in popularity over time helped Appoline feel involved in the world around her in a way that she hadn't even known she was missing as a dedicated housewife. It was… it was wonderful, and Appoline felt like she was just nineteen years old again, embarking on the unknown.

But that wasn't all.

Yet another matter that was already improving Appoline's quality of life was in regards to her youngest daughter, Gabrielle, as even now, at only eight Am in the morning, the nine year old girl was already up and hitting the books like there was no tomorrow (a fact that almost caused Appoline to faint when she walked past her youngest daughter's bedroom and caught her in the act).

Suffice it to say, Gabrielle was feeling driven in a way that Appoline had never seen from the girl before, which made sense, as now the youngest Delacour could experience real, tangible improvements in return for her efforts.

"Harry James Potter," Appoline slowly breathed out, while leaning back in her chair and cradling her coffee in both of her hands.

Flap Flap Flap rustle rustle.

Opening her eyes in response to a series of familiar flapping noises, Appoline saw Kramins, the Delacour family owl, settling down on a nearby railing and holding out their daily newspaper. Smiling at the bird, Appoline paid the sickle required for the ongoing subscription before untying the package from the owl's leg and opening up the paper to see if there was anything of interest… which there wasn't, at least, not at first glance…

It was on the sixth page of the paper, at the very top of the Entertainment column that Appoline eventually saw it, and she unceremoniously exploded into loud and raucous laughter, tears flowing from her eyes to drip off of her chin. Over the next five minutes, she read and reread the article over and over again, as it was pure - comedy - gold.

It was everything, absolutely everything, that Harry feared it would be, and yet it was so, so much more...

"What is it, wife," Adrien asked, after sauntering out onto the veranda with a gigantic coffee in hand.

While opening the paper to the relevant page and then sliding it onto the table in front of her husband, Appoline was forced to continually bite on her lower lip to stop herself from further laughter.

Leaning over his wife's shoulder, Adrien scanned the paper's contents for just a moment before his eyes suddenly widened to the size of saucers. Soon after, he was roaring with laughter along with his wife because this kind of super corny publicity stunt would be a complete nightmare for Harry, and the both of them knew it.

Appoline drew in several deep lungfuls of air just trying to regain her ability to speak, as she'd really committed to this second round of laughter and was legitimately out of breath. "Dobby, please, can you join us for a moment?"

Pop

"Yes, my Lady," Dobby answered with a courtly bow.

While in the background, Adrien performed a copy-spell, in order to scrapbook the newspaper article with the rest of them, Appoline regarded Dobby with mirth shining in her eyes. "My husband and I, we have a delivery for you to make to 'Arry during breakfast. 'Arry and my daughter have graced the entertainment section of Magical Britain's newspapers… so I'm quite certain all of his friends will enjoy reading about it…"

Dobby began smiling widely and not quite evilly along with Appoline, because yeah… Harry hates that stuff more than almost anything, and he could see what she had in mind. "It'll be done, my lady. I'll even procure a few more copies before I go back to Magical Britain so that every single one of his friends may enjoy their own copy."

"Ohohooh, Dobby…" Appoline giggled again and began having trouble composing herself. "What did I ever do without you?"

"A question I frequently ask myself as well, my Lady," Dobby very graciously replied with yet another bow. "I will make sure to collect my memories of the big reveal in pensieve form for your viewing pleasure."

"Oh, thank you, Dobby," Appoline enthused while giving the completely remarkable House elf a high intensity smile.

With the tip of an invisible hat, Dobby was gone, the pop he created almost completely inaudible.

"How in the name of the Gods am I supposed to please the ladies of my family in the face of Harry spoiling you all so shamelessly," Adrien lamented in a melodramatic tone of voice.

"You were complacent until now, my love, and 'Arry is only forcing you to put in the appropriate effort." Appoline smiled at her husband, who was, in fact, a very talented and thoughtful gift-giver.

Adrien smiled as he sank into the seat at his wife's side and then pulled his mug of coffee up towards his mouth.

"We can use the time until Dobby's return teaching you how to use the communication earring that 'Arry gifted you," Appoline suggested, her words quiet but sudden, a sly grin upon her face.

Adrien's face lost a little of its playfulness then, as he arched an eyebrow in question. "You can't mean to say they're already completed?"

"From idea, to development, to finished product in less than half a day, and from what I was told he made thirty of them," Appoline described, while shaking her head in wonder.

While Adrien gave Appoline a soft smile and his voice was warm when he spoke, the question that he asked clearly wasn't a joke in the slightest. "What manner of magical creature is that boy?"

"I'd say he's a Merlin, but I think someday he'll be the new standard by which magical society makes comparisons," Appoline replied in an equally soft tone of voice.

Nodding his head, Adrien lifted his legs up onto a wooden footstool, affixed the provided (clip-on) earring onto the lobe of his ear, hugged his wife when she relocated to his lap, and he spent the rest of the morning enjoying her tutelage…

After waking up in the gray-tinted light just preceding dawn with his wife snuggled up atop his body, Harry gently prepared the usual comfort trifecta, because he felt signs of increased activity in the bond and knew that his mate was in the process of waking up. With that in mind, he began rubbing her back in slow, soft movements, helping her along in the fashion that he did most mornings.

"M...usband... lo...ve you…" Fleur breathed out from what appeared to be the last vestiges of a dream.

Too much, too cute, Harry began smiling a wide, wide smile and just like that, a good morning was elevated to a great one.

"Ar... ry," Fleur murmured into his chest, her face rubbing against him slowly and gently. "So... good…" she continued in just the ghost of a voice.

Nodding his head, Harry realized he was suffering from success, because skipping yet another day of training didn't seem wise.

Slowly, cutely looking up at her husband from his chest, Fleur stared at the man with doleful, puppy dog eyes, as if begging him to stay with her, to lay with her…

Harry took damage even though he could sense that his wife wasn't being completely serious, but then he had an idea and his face took on a thoughtful cast… "I wonder if Selene would be interested in our escapades from last night…"

While Harry acted as if he was merely pondering that question, they both knew what he was really up to… Fleur was well-aware that she was being manipulated, and yet it was working because that sounded like a lot of fun.

Damn…

Slowly, reluctantly, Fleur rolled off her husband, and the two of them began approaching their day.

Later that morning, Neville and Harry exited their customary workout together, and they walked in the direction of the Great Hall for breakfast, during which time Harry had a thought. He was beginning to lose track of how the other boys from his year were doing…

Unfortunately, Neville wasn't very helpful in that regard.

When Harry asked the boy about the Gryffindor fourth year guys, Neville admitted that he'd been sleeping curled up with Hannah every single night for at least a week now and that he didn't plan on returning to his own bed any time soon, but that most matters appeared business as usual in classes, and that was about all he knew.

Of course, by the time Neville was finished explaining all of that, Harry was far too busy rejoicing on Neville's behalf to give a damn about his other dorm-mates, and the two of them pushed each other around as they entered the Hall…

Of course the occupants of The Great Hall paused as Harry and Neville entered it, but neither Harry nor Neville even blinked in response to the phenomena because these things do tend to happen.

Harry, for one, was far more interested in getting some food into him rather than finding out what fresh atrocity he'd taken part in according to the various gossip mags.

Approaching the Gryffindor table, Harry slid into his customary seat next to his wife, and he wasn't surprised in the slightest to find his hand pulled into her lap just a single moment later. "Good morning, love," Harry quietly greeted while smiling in appreciation at the large plate of nutritious food sitting in front of him, prepared in advance as Fleur felt him approach.

Pop!

"Good morning Master," Dobby brightly announced, as the elf levitated about ten newspapers all around the table. "It has been brought to my attention, you all may enjoy reading the Entertainment section of these papers… Goodbye."

Pop.

Then the elf was gone, long before anyone could ask any further questions.

"Ze French Gazette," Selene commented in a confused voice. "Zis ees one of ze papers I read at 'ome…"

Harry just shook his head in long suffering because he had a feeling he already knew exactly why. Picking up the paper, he flipped through the pages until he saw it… and then he slumped backwards in his seat.

An entire page of the Entertainment section was full of different photos of Harry and Fleur with small captions under them, and then there was an article featuring them at the bottom of the page.

A full page article on the two of us just walking around and doing essentially nothing? Did nothing happen at all in Magical France yesterday?

At Harry's side, he felt Fleur reading the same article, but unlike him, the woman was becoming visibly amused rather than embarrassed.

By this point, Hermione, Cedric, Neville, Bella and Selene (those people that could read the article), were all turning red while trying to contain their rising mirth at Harry's expense.

Fleur looked at all the people around the table that could not read the French in front of them and then adopted a completely innocent and yet extremely evil smile.

Soon enough, Fred, George, Alicia, Katie and Angelina began looking back and forth between the article's French captions and Fleur, because they could all easily see that she was about to make them smile.

"Eef you will allow me to do so, I will now read ze French captions underneath ze different photos," Fleur finally announced, her smooth and polished demeanor just barely maintained in the face of her amusement.

Harry knew exactly what was coming, so he turned his attention to his breakfast (without much success), and acted as if he wasn't affected in the slightest (again without much success).

Everyone began looking at Fleur with stars in their eyes because yes, yes, Fleur had every intention of teasing Harry… and this was going to be good.

"Eef you will observe ze top left photo," Fleur began while raising the paper and indicating the referenced area like a beautiful assistant from a game show. "Eet as a razzer romantic photo of 'Arry and I 'olding 'aands while walking through a park setting. Ze caption underneath says, and I quote. Ze very gallant and dashing, young buck Lord Potter escorting his beau ze very ravishing Lady Delacour for a frolic around ze Blue Road's lakeside park…"

Snicker, giggle

Frolic

giggle snicker

Young buck

By this point, Harry was observing the fake sky capping the Great Hall, because he already knew that this was going to continue and that it was only going to get worse from here…

Turning her attention back towards the newspaper article, Fleur continued her production with a beatific smile upon her face. "Now I will bring your attention to ze top right photo of ze page, een which 'Arry and I are flirting while playing ze piano een a band-shell een ze park. Unbeknownst to us we are garnering an audience and are completely oblivious. Ze caption underneath ze photo says ze following... Ze very dapper, debonair, Lord Potter and 'iis resplendent paramour Lady Delacour play a beautiful piano piece for a gazzering crowd of enraptured listeners…"

Once again, Fleur performed the whole show shtick and everyone was now officially having a fantastic damn time.

Giggle

debonair

snicker

paramour

With nowhere to turn and no escape available, Harry was hiding his face under a double face-palm with his elbows on the table, because this was all just way too much for him and even with his Occlusions, he was barely holding back a blush.

When everyone finally came down from their mad giggling, Fleur brought their attention to the photo near the bottom of the page. "Last, but certainly not least, zis completely adorable photo at ze bottom features 'Arry and I exiting a tattoo parlor arm in arm, and I am very clearly marveling at 'iis brand new ear piercing..." Fleur looked at Harry then with a grin on her face that could only be described as malevolent. "Ze caption for zis photo ees particularly eengenious eef you ask me and eet goes as follows. Ze very daring, audacious Lord Potter shows 'iis stunning date Lady Delacour 'ow big a macho man, beefcake 'ee ees, by 'aaving an ear pierced during zeir date to ze Blue Road…."

Once again, Fleur began performing the game show prize showing motions but she needn't have bothered. By that point, everyone was far far too busy howling with mad laughter to even notice her efforts, on and on in a state of completely helpless mirth.

Soul deep agony would be the only way that Harry could describe the way he currently felt, even as a short guffaw slipped past his lips at the absurdity of those words… But he also shook his head and desperately waved his hands for his friends' attention. "Fleur is embellishing the article and the word beefcake was never used…"

"'Arry is lying," Selene immediately choked out even as she wiped joyful tears from her eyes. "Fleur's words were a direct translation, so don't listen to a seengle word zat ze macho man, beefcake ees saying!"

And just like that, Selene successfully set everyone off again, and the laughter didn't stop for at least a minute longer. Breakfasts were forgotten, hands helplessly pounded the table, spoons dropped to the floor.

The Gryffindor table was in chaos, and Harry took it all in with the air of a man that's found enlightenment to escape his worldly torment… which is what allowed him to notice that Mrs. McGonagall was approaching from the head table and was gesturing for a moment of his time.

Oh thank the Gods…

Since he was well-aware that Fleur intended to narrate the article at the bottom of the page, Harry immediately took the provided escape… Nodding his understanding towards the head of his house, Harry rose to his feet and quickly walked to the side of the room. By the time Mrs. McGonagall joined Harry at the wall, he was leaning back against the stone, where he was watching his friends unravel into uncontrollable laughter from a relatively safe distance.

"Good morning professor McGonagall. How may I help you," Harry asked, when the woman slid into place at his side and watched the people at his table suffer a fit of hysterics.

As Minerva McGonagall turned her attention away from the violent laughter unfolding at the Gryffindor table, she found herself staring at the young man to her right, trying to reconcile him with the small, underfed, bundle of nerves that she'd met three and a half years earlier, and trying to come to terms with her abject failure as an educator…

McGonagall knew, after all.

-She knew that Harry's time at Hogwarts had been one life endangering escapade after another, every single year so far

-She knew that Harry no longer trusted the teaching staff to be even vaguely helpful in an emergency, and that he had every right to feel the way that he felt

-She knew that the teaching staff continually and persistently disregarded his many warnings, until finally he stopped bothering to deliver them

-She knew that Harry viewed his enrolment in the Triwizard tournament as yet another failure on their part to assure their students' safety, and once again he wasn't wrong in that assessment

Minerva McGonagall had much to atone for, and no way to do so beyond giving the boy the freedom he needed to make the most of his time with Ms. Delacour, who she knew was rapidly training Harry into a very capable man… among other things. .

Minerva wasn't happy about her abysmally bad track record regarding Harry, as well as her lack of involvement in his most recent growth. Nevertheless, she really was happy that Harry had become so competent over the last half year, and that he was quite capable of taking care of himself.

With all this running through her mind, Minerva scrutinized the young man standing beside her with enough intensity that he straightened in response and stared at her in return. Then she spoke, her words much softer than her current demeanor would suggest… "Good morning Mr. Potter… First of all, I'd like to know when you want to show me and Professor Flitwick the extra Transfiguration/Charms work that we've provided you..."

In response to McGonagall's question, Harry visibly relaxed and smiled, as truth be told he'd been expecting a reprimand for either being out of the country all day yesterday or for sleeping in the Beauxbatons carriage with his wife every night. Despite Neville's successful bluff earlier in the year, Harry was well-aware that he wasn't really exempt from sleeping in his dormitory, and he didn't truly believe that his Runed up dorm bed was fooling her (or anyone really).

At the same time, Harry thought about his schedule with Cedric and Fleur the following day, and realized that, yes, he did have some free time. "Anytime after three Pm tomorrow is fine with me, Professor. Just tell me when you're available and I'll go to either of your classrooms."

Minerva nodded, stepped forward so that she was no longer leaning against the wall, and nodded her head with a business casual demeanor. "How does three-thirty Pm tomorrow in my classroom sound?"

Harry noted that three-thirty was in the gap between his training and Quidditch practice so it was about as perfect as he could ask for. "That works for me, Professor."

"Next, I have a request on behalf of your Defense Against the Dark Arts Professor, Mr. Moody…" Minerva hedged, some of the tension from before returning to her face as she visibly approached a favor.

To Harry's advanced senses, Minerva appeared to be nervous about something, with her magical aura holding trace amounts of hope and longing that he didn't yet understand. He'd never really gotten to know Mad Eye Moody in the few DADA classes that he attended before October, which left him wondering why Minerva was so very nervous about this request…

"Harry…" McGonagall began.. "It has come to our attention that you had advanced warning in regards to a problem with the Wards during the dueling tryouts. Many students were quick to point out that you warned your friends to pull out their wands long before anyone else knew that there was a problem with the magical boundary."

While Harry arched an eyebrow as a precursor to a question, Minerva quickly raised a hand to get ahead of his reply. "The teaching staff know that you're secretive, Harry, but that incident wasn't a secret and we hear things. Rest assured. We are not spreading information about your… gifts."

For now, Harry just nodded in response.

"The day after the Dueling tryouts, we Professors had a lot of trouble getting the students to stop gossiping about your heroics long enough to get any work done, and in the process, we heard all about your skill with Wards. Later, it was confirmed by Professor Babbling that you were in her Runes class and that you were learning at a frightening pace. For that reason, when Professor Moody asked for volunteers from his fellow Professors to help him oversee the preliminaries of the dueling tournament later today… your name repeatedly came up as a potential solution."

"A… solution, Professor," Harry asked.

"Ahem, yes," McGonagall replied while drawing in a breath. "Professor Moody expressed concerns that there might be another debacle regarding safety if we rely on Ministry hired strangers like we did during the tryout, and in response several of the professors pointed out that you're clearly sensitive to the inner workings of Ward schemes and can also repair them if required to. The teaching staff were hoping that you would step forward today as an assistant proctor and help Professor Moody oversee the preliminaries."

"Pardon me, Professor, but are there no professors better suited to the task," Harry asked, completely failing to conceal his incredulity. "I'm not sure how the student body would react to a fellow student overseeing their safety…"

At that, Minerva just arched an eyebrow at Harry, making it quite clear how she felt on the matter.. "Harry... Do you really think the students will worry about you keeping them safe?"

After several moments passed, Harry just shrugged in defeat and then asked the real question they both knew was coming. "Why me? Why not you, or Flitwick, or Babbling, or Sinistra…"

"Harry… Do you know what Professors do during Hogsmeade weekends," McGonagall asked. "We grade papers and then shop for new clothing, tools and bric-a-brac, and then we visit our families or romantic interests. We stuff as much productivity as we can into this time, and while we may have helped Professor Moody if we were given advanced warning, the man only brought his needs up with us this morning."

Minerva sighed as if admitting any of what she just said physically pained her, but Harry saw the rest of the Professor table staring at her back, and he recognized that she was their chosen spokesperson.

"I suppose you can see why there've been no volunteers to assist Professor Moody thus far," McGonagall asked.

Slowly, thoughtfully, Harry nodded because yes, he understood. He also nodded because he understood why the Professor was leery of asking him for help. The witch wasn't stupid, after all. She had to know by now that he wasn't too enamored with Hogwarts's teaching staff.

In the end, when Harry decided to assist Professor McGonagall, the decision was based purely on the fact that the woman was giving him a lot of personal freedom this year, he knew how out of character it was for her to relax house rules, and he really did appreciate the woman's good judgment.

With a glance back at his table where Fleur was giving him a knowing look, Harry slowly bounced away from the wall and then gave the Professor a small smile of assent. "This morning I'm scheduled to watch the dueling preliminaries with my friends, before spending the rest of the day training with Fleur and Cedric, which means I do have time to help Professor Moody during the event itself, but not with the cleanup afterwards."

With that much said, Harry shrugged because this was the best that he could do. He was extremely determined to train.

Rather than look upset, McGonagall was visibly happy that Harry couldn't help Moody with the cleanup, which likely meant she was quite unhappy with the man. "I appreciate your help Mr. Potter and I'm sure Professor Moody will be even more grateful. He'll meet you in the clearing just down the hill from the Entry Hall at nine Am, where a series of stands are being erected as we speak. He'll have a proctor uniform prepared for you when you arrive."

With an absentminded nod, Harry began turning back towards the Gryffindor table, with McGonagall striding away at high speed in his peripheral vision. It did appear, the gray-haired Professor wasn't immune to the appeal of R …

Of course by the time Harry arrived back at the Gryffindor table, his wife was already informing their friends about his conscription into the Duelling Proctors' ranks… but she also had a somewhat lecherous smile upon her face when she turned in his direction. "I seem to recall you saying zat you would never wear one of zose tight leetle Proctor outfits… I also recall zinking you would look really good een eet…"

Only then did Harry remember, and he double face-palmed himself for the second time in less than ten minutes

After breakfast, when Harry and his friends marched down to the event platform that had appeared from nothing overnight, they saw that it was rather large. It wasn't Inter-School Quidditch Tournament large, but it was big all the same.

Several sections of stands had been Conjured into place just this morning, and they all looked like miniature Quidditch stands. The lowest row of seats began about seven meters off the ground and then rose sharply with every tier back to about eight meters tall in the furthest rows back.

After further scrutiny, Harry surmised that all of the Dueling would be done one duel at a time this morning, because there was only the one large flagstone platform situated in the middle of all of the erected stands.

With that much figured out, Harry scanned the stands and the people working on them with his eyes in order to find the very mysterious and magically cloaked Professor Moody, and as per usual, it felt jarring that he had to actually look for the man with his eyes rather than just 'feel' his presence with his magical senses.

Thankfully, Professor Moody was standing right in front of the platform, where he was directing the Ministry staff like a spider on a web.

With one last wave at his friends, who were moving to capture seats, Harry turned towards his wife and accepted her arms around his waist… "I know that I'll most likely end up standing around doing nothing this morning, but… please… do try not to give me an erection will you?"

"No promises," Fleur instantly replied while grinning at her mate. "You are proctoring this event because everyone knows that you would crush them if you were to take part, thus, they trust you to keep them safe, and that thought makes me… warm… Nevertheless, I will try."

"I appreciate your consideration," Harry breathed out with a kiss to his wife's scalp that had him enjoying the scent of her hair... "Oh, and one more thing. Please keep in mind that this is Hogwarts…"

"My wand will not be far from my hand," Fleur confirmed, her lips softly rubbing against the side of Harry's neck.

Abruptly, Harry and Fleur broke away from each other, as they heard an irregular stepping, clacking sound moving in their direction.

"Ah! There you are!" Professor Moody regarded Harry with a twisted grin on his face as he approached the boy and his electric blue eye watched Fleur move off towards the stands. "I was told the Professors managed to guilt-trip you into helping me, but nonetheless I appreciate it. We never had a chance to get to know each other before you became exempt from my classes, so I'm looking forward to working with you."

"I am as well, Professor," Harry replied in return. "I've heard your classes are more brilliant… and scary… every single week."

Moody laughed good and hard at that as he pulled a black uniform out of a bag at his feet. "Yes, yes, I imagine the students do find my classes scary. I'm teaching a scary course of study and they should've been taking it this seriously their entire time at Hogwarts. I'm just the shock they needed in order to begin taking their own protection with the gravity it deserves."

"I completely agree, Professor," Harry replied while nodding in return.

"I imagine you would agree, given the life that you've led, Mr. Potter." After Moody's grin dimmed for just an instant, It returned as he visibly scrutinized the boy that was standing in front of him. "Taking out ten mercenaries this summer, even more at Hogsmeade, and surviving the first Mini-Task… Those are not the actions of an unprepared fourteen year old. You're like me, Mr. Potter. You're prepared, you're trained, you're observing CONSTANT VIGILANCE!"

Harry very carefully didn't startle at the man's very random full volume outburst, but it was a very close won thing.

Seeing that he hadn't startled the boy in front of him, Professor Moody nodded happily as if he'd just proven his own point. "Here, Mr. Potter. Take this uniform. I've been informed… in confidence… by my fellow Professors that you have unbelievably acute magical senses and the same has even been alluded to by our dear Headmaster himself... Now, I don't know exactly what that entails, but I do understand that there's very little you miss when it comes to the magic happening around you. I'll be depending on you to monitor the proceedings this afternoon. I'd also like you to remain on the lookout just in case a student or proctor tries to summarily execute their adversary during one of the duels. Headmaster Dumbledore frowns on such things," Moody drawled out with yet another twisted grin.

"I promise to pay very close attention," Harry stoically replied, as he didn't know if he should grin with the man at the idea that his fellow students might try to kill each other.

"Good, good!" Professor Moody had that look in his eye again, as if he'd been testing Harry just then and one of his opinions had been confirmed. "There are some small rooms beneath the stands that you may use to change into the uniform, and then I'd like you to assist with some Warding and Conjuration."

"I don't mind helping out, but I'd rather not reveal anything too... dramatic... to the student body at large," Harry hedged, hopeful that Moody would understand his concerns.

Sure enough, Professor Moody looked like he'd just learned a lot from what Harry just said and apparently, he liked the sounds of it. The man nodded as if they were sharing a joke and then dismissed him with a wave of his hand.

Walking away from the celebrated ex-Auror, Harry was a little bit troubled by the man. His magic didn't like the man but the reasons for that were actually pretty obvious, and shouldn't have had much bearing on how he perceived him analytically. Nevertheless, Harry felt close-mouthed around Professor Moody, and he didn't like how much information the retired Auror had access to…

After entering the ramshackle, wooden storage room built under the stands, Harry quickly changed into the uniform that had been provided for the job. As he was putting it on Harry realized exactly why Fleur had been so excited about this proctor uniform and he knew that it was going to garner a lot of attention today. The uniform was a skin tight, black and white striped shirt, with sleeves that barely went past his shoulders and black pants in a similar fashion.

Tight… It was all just so damned tight, like the cat-suit that Fleur wore during the first mini-task, and what's more, it was clearly designed to look that way…

In the bond, Fleur was having a fantastic time taking in her husband's struggle with the uniform, and she not so casually suggested that he hurry up because she was looking forward to the view.

Shrugging his shoulders, Harry just decided to man up and live with his modesty being trampled all to hell with as much class as possible. He marched back out to the dueling platform and began helping the Ministry hired Dueling officials put together the stage and the stands.

Half An Hour later…

Harry James Potter was absolutely livid… for the following reasons:

The so-called 'Officials' that the Ministry hired were nothing but goons contracted on the cheap, which was completely obvious because their Conjuration skills were extremely shoddy and the entire stadium was of poor quality as a result. What's more, warning Professor Moody had received many angry curses and muttering but not nearly as much help as Harry had hoped to receive. Apparently, Moody was a piss poor Conjurer and a job the size that Harry was describing would be far beyond his skills.

Rather than solve the problem or call off the event, Moody asked Harry to do what he could about the Conjuration while he brought up the issue with the Ministry's hired men.

With very little choice in the matter, Harry made himself very busy bolstering weak points in whatever section of the stands he encountered problems in (all of them), until eventually, the construction would survive a single day of normal, mundane use, and Harry turned his attention towards the stands that were supporting his wife. A wife that was simmering with anger at this point, but was saving her magic for emergencies (since she wasn't powerful enough to Conjure thousands of planks of wood)….

Finally, Harry saw Professor Moody calling him over again, and he stomped in the man's direction with his hands balled up into fists.

"The ministry officials scoff at your claims and say you're but a child with no idea what you're talking about…" Moody's words were delivered in a picture perfect deadpan, a perfect counterpoint to the electric blue eye that was rapidly spinning in its socket.

"Give me a list of their names, Professor," Harry quietly seethed. "I just completely rebuilt those stands, and I will seek justice through my Noble house…"

"I'll have a list waiting for you at the end of the event… but what you just said… really," Moody asked. "Will the stands really hold up?"

With one last look at the stands with his magical senses, Harry begrudgingly nodded his head. "Normal use. No jumping around, no stampeding, no fires or floods or magical beasts…"

"I'll deliver that warning before I begin the event," Moody promised, before rubbing his neck with a look of both relief and chagrin upon his face. "I know you don't like public spectacle, Harry, but I'm still going to place you at one of the dueling platform's boundary corners. I need you to keep a close eye on the dueling barrier this afternoon, because I don't trust these Proctors."

With a clipped nod of his head and a long indrawn breath, Harry stalked away from Professor Moody, and he skull-fucked the other proctors with his eyes as he took a spot at a corner of the dueling platform.

Some of the Proctors had the courtesy to at least look embarrassed, but most of them just turned their chins up at him.

The list… Harry needed that list. He was magically winded at this point (which was really saying something), and was recouping his losses by converting ambient heat from the sun into magic (a slow process considering it was an overcast day in late November).

Within the following five minutes, the event began, and three different student bodies filed into the stands in an orderly fashion, as per Moody's instructions. Not long after that, student competitors from all three schools moved out towards the dueling platform, where they congregated within their own separate dugouts lining three ends of the platform.

It was time for the event to begin…

"Good morning everybody and welcome to The Triwizard Tournament's Inter-School Dueling Preliminaries," Moody announced in a magically bolstered voice. "Today, the different teams from Hogwarts, Beauxbatons and Durmstrang, will be dueling against professional proctors contracted specifically for this task, with the purpose of seeding the tournament brackets that we'll be using later in the school-year. The Tournament itself will be operating in single elimination format, thus our goal is to evenly distribute the most skillful duelists. For that reason, all of the competitors will be scored on a scale from one to fifteen, and since the top four participants will completely skip the first round of dueling, I expect them all to take it very seriously."

Sure enough, with those words, Harry saw all of the competitors straighten, and he even saw hands curl white-knuckle tight around several wands.

"In response to the Wards failing so dramatically during the Hogwarts' dueling team tryouts, we have placed four Proctors on standby at the corners of the dueling platform, and you may recognize one of those proctors as a familiar face," Moody continued, wry amusement in his voice. "Young Lord Potter came highly recommended by the Professors, and has been 'voluntold' to take part today."

When the audience started enthusiastically cheering, Harry forced himself to smile and wave as if his patience with this whole event wasn't strained to its limits.

"Many of you may already be wondering so I will immediately clarify that Hogwarts's second Champion Lord Potter most certainly will not be taking part in any of the duels today," Moody announced, sounding as if he expected a few arguments from the lined up competitors…

Which didn't happen… The competitors all breathed out a collective sigh of relief.

Moody was amused as he turned back towards the audience. "Mr. Potter has proven to be quite skilled in regards to both Wards and Boundaries, so his main focus today will be to make sure he doesn't have to Conjure several rock walls in front of the audience."

Laughter from the audience, but not a lot of it because it wasn't really a joke, it was a fact.

"In a few moments, I will begin calling out the names of the competing students from all three schools in alphabetical order," Moody described while gesturing at a line of adult wizards that were standing off to the side looking both pompous and self-important. "The called on student will then duel with a randomly designated dueling proctor using official International Dueling Tournament Rules. Anyone who breaks an official dueling tournament rule will be either penalized points or barred from further competition depending on the severity of the infraction. All three teams have been thoroughly briefed about what the international dueling rules are and contain. For that reason, ignorance of the rules will not be a valid excuse and I do not want to hear those taboo words 'but that isn't how it works where I come from'."

Once again there was laughter from the stands because, yeah, that would definitely be said by someone anyway, and most people could already see that.

"Let us begin," Moody finally barked out, when the crowd settled down again and the competitors seemed prepared. He regarded a long list of names and called out the words Abernathy Anderson and Durmstrang in a loud, clear voice.

Over the course of the next hour, Harry observed many duels and there were no rule infractions or ward breakdowns, or anything that required he even take part. It also didn't appear that many of the students were going to actually beat the Proctors today, but rather, almost all of the seventh years taking part completely exhausted themselves before being rendered unconscious and judged on their results.

Finally, Harry saw the little Hogwarts girl named Mary McDonald walk up onto the platform and meet up with a Proctor with pale white skin and dark brown muddy hair combed forward in front of his eyes. Disregarding the appearance of the man, Harry didn't like the look of the Proctor because his magic felt unfriendly.

Sure enough, when the douchie 'feeling' proctor saw little Mary walk up onto the platform, he immediately scoffed in derision. "Am I to beat down a kindergarten student now Moody," the man called out with a voice full of scorn. I thought I was contracted to fight talented teenagers, not delusional firsties."

Harry shook his head at the clearly moronic Proctor because he remembered Mary's response to Ron saying similar things earlier in the year, and it didn't make any more sense this time then it did with the redhead. Physical size means literally nothing in a magical duel and it's complete and utter idiocy to assume otherwise. Hell, half the reason Flitwick was an ex-Champion duelist, was because the man was tiny, and according to the stories, he was prone to propelling himself back and forth across the platform at high speeds via some kind of leaping spell…

As expected, the feral smile that Mary gave the Proctor in response to the man's absurdly unprofessional jeering, and the way that her grip tightened, and then loosened, on her wand… The girl was preparing to raise all hell.

"Mr. Foehnor, show your competitor the respect she deserves not just because you're supposed to be a professional, but because no one taking part today is weak," Mr. Moody cautioned with a look of disgust on his already disgusting face. Then, when the younger witch nodded her readiness in his direction, he bellowed out the word begin and jumped backwards out of the platform.

The duel that followed made Harry beam a wide, and happy smile, because it was exactly as he suspected… kind of. Truth be told, it actually felt to his senses like Mary was holding back to hide the true extent of her abilities, but that didn't change the quality of the duel. The girl used many small crafty spells in clever ways when she could've used larger more effective ones… and it was working.

Mary McDonald was making that piece of garbage Mr. Foehnor run around like a headless chicken because he couldn't even touch her. The girl was fast, and although Foehnor wasn't having trouble blocking the school level spells that she was using, he was beginning to look incompetent to an extent that made Harry's day.

Unfortunately, it looked like Mary was finally running out of physical stamina because of the drawn out duel, and she was going to have to rely on her cunning from this point forward…

While acting like she was staggering backwards away from Foehner's attacks, Mary McDonald quick-cast a triplet of Incarcerous spells that he immediately set ablaze, but in the meantime she'd cast a low level charm that Conjured a whirlwind of pure oxygen near the proctor's feet. The fire spell that Foehner cast invariably hit the oxygen released by Mary's spell, and the man yipped painfully as he was forced to dive away from a sudden small explosion of fire in his face.

In the wake of the explosion, the teenagers in the audience slowly began giggling into their hands at Foehner's expense, because the man just lost his fringe of hair along with his eyebrows, and he looked completely ridiculous.

Mr. Foehnor, on the other hand, was not amused, and he yelled out some very creative curse words in a fit of extreme rage before beginning to cast an entire wall of Incarcerous ropes in response. Unfortunately, Mary really was winded at this point and although she tried to dive out of the way of the rope binding spells, her legs were wrapped up and weighted down to the ground, leaving her helpless to avoid the man's followup attack.

With a snarl of mixed anger and aggression, Fuehner unleashed a barrage of low level cutting curses that flew towards the girl's face in an unbroken line…

While under normal circumstances, low level cutting curses are relatively harmless and are in fact tournament legal, the same can not be said when you cast a machine gun clip of them at a tied up opponent's face and neck, and Harry knew two things for sure in that moment. He knew that Mr. Foehnor was breaking International Dueling Tournament regulations, and he knew that poor Mary was about to be cut to bloody ribbons...

And even before that thought finished forming in his mind, Harry was off, dashing into the platform while recruiting Aethir to help him move fast, and pulling out his wand to use as a prop.

Right away, Harry knew that he was going to get to the little Hufflepuff girl at the exact same time as the hailstorm of cutting curses, which was a problem because he didn't want to raise a shield in front of her before he physically arrived at her side… Harry Potter can run while holding a Protego shield (or several of them), and he can even maintain that shield several meters away from his body, but only because he's an absurdly powerful wizard and has an immensely widespread aura shroud. Under normal circumstances however, the more a wizard moves around, the more their Protego shield is pulled away from the magic that created it, at which point it begins to fall apart. What this means is that diving in front of someone at high speeds with a shield held in place in front of your body the whole time would normally be extremely high level magic, and Harry refused to reveal that kind of skill.

No. Instead, Harry poured on the speed like a damn madman, dashing towards the girl and head long into the storm of cutting curses that were flying towards her, and in the next moment, he slid directly in front of Mary's exposed head/torso, he slammed aside the leading curse with the glowing tip of his wand, and then he erected a Protego to block those curses that followed. Five, ten, fifteen cutting curses bounced down into the platform off of Harry's glowing golden shield, until finally the barrage came to an end and he bounced back to his feet.

And in the wake of Foehner's attack, Harry squared up against the very angry, panting and scorch-marked Proctor, and he drew up his wand as if it was his turn to duel…

"By International Dueling Tournament Standards, you are disqualified Mr. Foehnor," Harry announced with a magically bolstered voice that echoed around the stands. "After losing your temper on a student for daring to excel, you used lethal force in front of hundreds of witnesses... You're a disgrace, Mr. Foehner, and what's more, you're fired…"

By the end of his mini rant, Harry was releasing enormous amounts of Dursley inspired killing intent at the Proctor via tendrils of his extended aura shroud, because he did not intend to fight a duel with the man, with the end result being that Mr. Foehnor visibly flinched, paled, dropped his wand to his side, and then stormed off of the dueling platform without a word... like a bitch.

In the wake of the altercation, the occupants of the stands were completely silent as Harry quickly severed the ropes on Mary's legs and then pulled the shaken girl to her feet… "Get control of the audience right this very second," Harry quietly snapped at Professor Moody. "We cannot allow them all to jump to their feet!"

After blanching in alarm, Moody quickly nodded and turned towards the crowd, and began commentating the match in a way that decreased the building tension. A feat made much easier by Harry's growing reputation, as everyone was learning to expect such things from him, and they weren't as blown away as they would've been just a few months earlier.

Over the next half a minute, all of the people that were poised to hoot, holler, and jump around, all settled back into their seats and clapped along with everyone else.

Turning his focus back in Mary's direction, Harry sat down with the girl at the edge of the stage as Professor Moody dealt with that cretin Mr. Foehnor in the background… "Wow, Mary... Can I call you Mary? You're so much stronger than you were at the beginning of the year! You've become so fast and I was very impressed with your use of oxygen when that idiot decided to use fire on the ropes!"

At this point, Harry was trying to calm the girl down through sheer force of personality.

"I...I... Yes I... Thank you, yes, you may call me Mary. I yes, I am a little stronger now," Mary choked out, with an increasingly red-flushed face. "Professor Flitwick has been training me…"

Harry sighed as he looked at the sky so that the girl would breathe again. I can hardly believe how strong you'll be when you're my age if you keep up the training with Flitwick. I was nowhere near as competent as you are at your age… annnd now, I think, I better go join Professor Moody... Are you okay to get back to your friends?"

Mary quickly nodded, but the odds were good she wanted him gone so that she'd stop having a panic attack.

"Okay. I'll talk to you later Mary!" With Mary taken care of, Harry began walking over to where Moody was having a quiet but heated argument with that prick Mr. Foehnor.

"You know what? Fine! I'm fired so I'm out of here," Mr. Foehnor suddenly yelled before pointing his wand in the general direction of the platform and intoning the words, Finite Incantatum in a loud, clear, voice.

In an invisible dome that spread outwards in every direction, the magic negation spell exploded from Mr. Foehner's wand, and for the briefest of moments, Harry was rendered magically blind due to the effects of the spell… In the following moments tendrils of Harry's magic rushed out to fill the void and he could sense that the boundary wards around the dueling platform had spectacularly failed.

"Have fun raising those wards with one less person helping you," Foehner barked with an ugly sneer upon his face, only to blanch when Harry stepped in his direction, and then storm out of the arena like a born that way loser…

Needless to say, before Foehner walked out of sight, Harry cast upwards of twenty silent curses at the man's retreating back, causing everything from hair loss to impotence. Then, as Harry turned his attention back towards Professor Moody, he thought he heard the man muttering a curse for painful boils and he guffawed in his surprise.

Harry looked at Moody, Moody looked at Harry, then they both started laughing because yeah they'd both been cursing the ex-Proctor as he left the area, and now they both knew it. Harry chuckled for a few moments more… until all of the sudden he stopped in his tracks, and his eyes widened in surprise...

Professor Moody's magic obscuring devices had all catastrophically failed during Foehner's Finite Incantatum spell and were no longer in effect. Harry could actually sense the man for the very first time, and there was a lot going on with him magically.

Professor Moody was... he was geared up for slaughter with an extraordinarily powerful and evil Barrier/Curse Amplification Artifact strapped to his body, leaking tortured, twisted magic that wasn't of his making… Just as bad was the fact that the man clearly wasn't even him... he wasn't Moody... The man magically 'smelled' like Polyjuice and Harry's magic was picking up warning signs of a skin walker inside of the body that he was looking at. This man wasn't Mad-Eye Moody but rather an...

Instantly and thoroughly, Harry acted nonchalant, adopting a vapid smile upon his face.

It wasn't working...

Fuck...

Just now, Harry saw dawning realization in fake Moody's eyes. The man, whoever he was, now knew that he'd been revealed.

Harry looked at fake Moody, fake Moody looked back at Harry. For a single moment in time nothing happened as they both sized each other up. In the bond, Harry was already conveying to Fleur that Moody was a very dangerous imposter and that he was about to cause huge trouble! In return, he felt his wife begin alerting all of their friends and he received back a well then get moving idiot!

Harry conveyed back that it wasn't that simple because Moody knew about the state of the stands, and he was likely going to target them. Fleur conveyed that she was sending the Gryff girls/Bella running towards the castle for help, she'd sent Dobby off to find the Professors wherever they were, she'd sent Neville and Selene behind the stands to shore them up as much as they could and that Hermione was preparing to evacuate their fellow students.

Fleur herself was moving towards Harry to help, and she was making one thing perfectly clear as she moved in his direction. She wouldn't forgive him if he wasn't the first person to act!

In the instant that followed, Harry repeatedly attempted to wandlessly stun the man standing in front of him but nothing happened. Fake Moody had more high level magical boundary items strung upon his body than Harry had ever seen, and they'd all somehow survived the Finite Incantatum spell.

In response to Harry's invisible attack, the largest protection device that fake Moody was wearing on his chest activated completely and the man was suddenly wreathed in a red Barrier of some kind. Harry could feel waves of sick, tortured, evil magic radiating off of the device, and he knew instantly that using relatively weak, wandless spells on the man would be useless on something that powerfully awful. Only magical curses directed from a wand and containing a massive amount of power would do any damage whatsoever to the man standing in front of him.

Harry conveyed to Fleur what he was sensing and she berated him to focus on himself. In the next instant, Harry pulled out his wand.

In the exact same instant, fake Moody did the same…

Silently and wandlessly, Harry began a voice spreading charm ala Dumbledore so that what he said next wouldn't be noticeably louder from fake Moody's perspective, but would carry magically to every single ear present in the stands. Harry needed his words to be heard and understood by everyone as a warning to run for the hills.

"Woah hold on now... relax... If you want to, you can just walk on out of here right now and I won't even attempt to stop you," Harry casually pointed out, in the hopes that the man standing in front of him could be reasoned with... "I can see it in your expression… You know. You know I've figured you out… that you're an imposter. That you're not Professor Moody… but that doesn't mean I have any desire to stop you from leaving… Neither of us wants to endanger these students."

Harry injected his honest desire for a peaceful outcome into both his words and into his aura shroud, along with a sense of extreme urgency to the students that were sitting in the stands. He was hoping that the students that were watching from within the circumference of his aura shroud had brains in their heads and were beginning to run away.

Fake Moody's only response was to smile perversely while shaking his head in a slow but obvious negative…

Harry felt the man's intent in his magic and a shiver ran up his spine at the intense malevolence of it all, and he knew exactly what the man was planning on doing… so in his desperation to forestall disaster, he committed to doing what was necessary. Moving so quickly his actions verged on instantaneous, Harry powerfully cast a gouging curse, a cutting curse, a bone breaker and a Blasting hex directly at the sinister man's chest… and to his immense surprise and frustration, fake Moody's magical Barrier artifact easily took the abuse. Harry's curses rapidly decreased in power as they approached the man's body, and what did hit his body only shed off small layers of the red shield before it immediately reformed.

The Artifact, it had a powerful spell dampening effect with a radius of about a meter from his body, and that shield...

Needless to say, Harry had poured huge amounts of strength into those spells, enough power to instantly shred apart a highly Warded training wall, enough to cut through any number of Protego shields, leaving him shocked that he only chipped the man's shield with every single impact.

In the background, the audience loudly gasped in shock, because despite his voice projected warnings and the man's scary response, what Harry just did looked like an unprovoked murder attempt on a Professor.

On the other hand, Fake Moody appeared completely unfazed by the attack on his life and his smile had only widened in response. Harry saw the man was finally going to speak so he wandlessly cast another spell to carry his words to every ear in the stands.

"You think I care about these sheep?"Fake Moody asked both loudly and with unfeigned incredulity in his newly twisted voice. "I'm arealDeath Eater, boy, and that means for me, these stands are full of nothing but mudbloods and blood traitors… My master desires your presence to aid in his revival, but I don't even think that you're worthy of such a destiny, so I'm going to test you now… see what you're made of… If you survive me, you may even be worthy to be used as an ingredient in my Masters return! Oh he desires you Mr. Potter but my Master has never once demanded that I spare your mudblood schoolmates!"

Fake Moody cackled in mad glee to the sky as Harry once again smashed and cut at his absurdly strong protective barrier with several extremely powerful Cutting, Gouging, Blasting and Banishing curses, screaming the spells with his wand moving in a blur.

"Oh come now, Potter! Show me what you can really do," Moody demanded, raising his wand towards Harry, before slowly panning to his right and directly towards the audience. The man moved slowly, casually, as if mocking Harry's continued inability to reach him through his shields.

"Bombarda," Moody intoned in a loud, clear but insane sounding voice, gleefully sending a high explosive spell directly towards the newly scattering audience.

And Harry didn't even have time to think about it. He launched into rapid movement and jumped directly in front of the lunatic's explosive curse from point blank range. He intoned a Protego shield while rapidly moving without even a single moment of hesitation and he slanted the all-too-slowly emerging shield upwards towards the sky.

WHAM!

While Harry did successfully deflect the explosion curse up towards the sky, he'd never felt an attack curse with anywhere near that much lethal intent or strength behind it before. It slammed into his shield like an eighteen wheeler, almost shattering it completely while forcing Harry to stagger backwards several steps in order to finally regain his balance.

A costly delay that Harry did not have time for.

Even as his heels dug into the stone of the platform, Harry saw fake Moody aim yet another Bombarda spell far off to his right and once again directly at the panicking audience, and he gathered as much speed and power as he could because he needed to get there now. Launching through the air with every powerful kick, moving at speeds that would make Usain Bolt cry, Harry just barely caught up to the second Bombarda, skidded into place at the very last second, and intercepted it exactly like the first.

WHAM!

Once again, Harry sent the Bombarda careening off towards the sky, but with similar results to the first one… except worse. This time, he was already off balance when he blocked the curse, so he was sent spinning backwards at a terrible angle. Nevertheless, after spinning free of the turn, Harry started sprinting in the other direction, following the tip of fake Moody's wand.

Moody smiled perversely and swung his wand about four meters further away than last time before casting yet another Hellishly strong Bombarda spell, forcing Harry to call upon more of Aethir's involvement as he hauled ass towards the spell. He was almost there… almost… there!

WHAM!

It was becoming increasingly clear that fake Moody had Harry completely figured out, and it was also clear that he had a plan in mind with his newfound knowledge. First, the man cast an extremely strong Ignis Maxima far off to Harry's right before casting yet another Bombarda curse directly through the massive wave of fire he just created.

Ah Dammit, was all Harry had time to even think on the matter, before he was sprinting at full speed straight at a wall of flames beyond which he would find the next Bombarda curse. In the next instant, he was leaping through the air with a full dome Protego shielding his body, and he was bursting through the other side of the flames just in time to compress the dome into a smaller, more powerful Protego.

WHAM!

Harry's feet weren't even touching the ground when he caught this last curse and he barely caught sight of it in time to deflect it away, with the end result being that he was sent flying into a clumsy and desperate roll towards the edge of the platform. A roll that Harry fully embraced, because it moved him beyond the follow up Ignis Maxima that Moody cast in his direction and provided him the momentum he needed to bounce back up to his feet. For just a split second, his right pant-leg was on fire, but then he subconsciously put out the flame with an outpouring of wandless magic, as he slid to a stop on his feet.

By now screaming could be heard from every direction, a mass exodus of the stands was finally taking place all around them, and in Harry's peripheral vision, his radically Occluded mind took note of the scores of students, including Ron Weasley and Draco Malfoy, that were sprinting into the forest as fast as their legs would carry them… along with the Ministry's contracted dueling Proctors. Needless to say, Harry was quite happy for Ron to run away from danger, but the idea of the magically mature, adult, dueling Proctors fleeing to save themselves at the cost of the school aged children in their care… That was completely unforgivable.

The list… Harry would be getting his hands on that list… but for now, that matter was just another piece of data that was collected by his brain…

The Lion's share of Harry's mind and focus was centered on Moody, and how the man was firing off yet another Bombarda curse, this one aimed so far away it would be impossible to intercept in time, and heading in the direction of another set of stands.

Stands that were still occupied by scores of scared, frantic students that were trying, and failing, to cooperate with each other, to access the stairs.

Harry tried to stop it, to intercept it, but it was much too far away. He attempted to Conjure a wooden object in the way, but it formed too slowly at the edges of his aura shroud and the magic was torn apart by the spell in passing.

Carhuump!

In a violent, fire filled explosion, the blasting curse ruptured the entry stairs and support beams of the stands like a hammer in the hands of a giant, and the only saving grace was the fact that the bottleneck of pushing people at the top of the stairs kept everyone free.

But the danger was far from over…

In a chain reaction of pops and fizzles, all of the Conjured wooden supports on the other side of the stands splintered before vanishing under the sudden strain being put on them, and a whole damn section of the stands suddenly started plummeting seven meters to the ground.

Harry's perception of the world slowed then, as over fifty students stood upon a series of pews that slowly, ever so slowly began accelerating towards the earth, and for a lack of better ideas and in a moment of complete desperation, he continued running towards the stands with his wand leading the way, and he desperately yelled out the words Arresto Momentum with everything he had.

And the stands… stopped, suspended, for the moment, as if time was halted in its tracks…

Instantly, Harry's brain felt as if it would explode with the strain of channeling the magic required to continue the spell, as he was holding up several tons of wooden beams and people and it was doing his brain massive amounts of damage with every single second that passed. Harry needed to end the spell ASAP, but he couldn't just up and drop several dozen students to their deaths… Which, unfortunately for Harry, meant even more magic was required.

With a grunt of mental effort, Harry rapidly began Transfiguring a massively strong stone column out of the ground while holding up the stands with an ongoing torrent of enormous power, and the focus required almost got Harry killed because his magic barely caught on to the heart bursting curse that was flying towards his back.

In the end it was Fleur, who was currently running in Harry's direction through the congestion of fleeing students, who saw Moody cast the curse, and her mental scream gave Harry time to react properly, to do more than merely fall flat onto his stomach.

"Dodge!"

So Harry dodged, rolling sideways under the curse in a way that allowed him to continue pointing his wand up towards the stands, during which time he saw in his peripheral vision that fake Moody was standing at the edge of the dueling platform, a sick, insane leer further twisting his mangled features.

Then Harry was bouncing back up to his feet, where he started moving sideways to keep the man in his peripheral vision.

For the Gods know what time, Fake Moody seemed to find Harry's efforts funny, and he hopped off the platform in order to saunter in Harry's direction, casting maiming curses at the boy with every few steps that he took.

Even as Harry dodged the incoming spellfire, he recognized that he was being squished between a rock and a hard place. He could only move so far away from the stands while continuing to perform his Arresto Momentum spell and Transfiguration efforts. He also couldn't divide his magic in any more directions, because he already felt a trickle of blood leaking from his nose, and his focus was split in too many directions.

Harry was stuck. What's more, he was helpless to do anything but roll, dodge and leap aside from the blistering, melting and bone vanishing curses that fake Moody cast at him, as the man approached closer and closer with his wand a blur of motion… Still… Harry didn't give up, he didn't turn away, because he felt her deep inside, and his faith in her was completely unshakable…

And then, all of the sudden, as if to reward Harry's belief, Harry felt Fleur seize control of some core magic that he didn't have the focus required to channel, at which point he pushed as much as he could spare directly into her body… He cast it aside with reckless abandon, as he limboed under an organ rotting curse, and continued maintaining his magic, and Fleur didn't let him down.

In a bid to use the power Harry foisted in her direction before it leaked from her core, Fleur instantly poured it into raising a massive, thick rock-wall between him and fake Moody, a literal bulwark of stone and condensed clay that erupted from the ground so quickly, the surrounding ground imploded and cracked.

Harry's ingenious wife had done exactly what he needed to finish his project, and he instantly poured his entire focus into getting this shit done… For a single silent moment, Harry could simply perform magic, and the stone column rapidly grew into place.

Then Harry heard Fleur scream through the bond that Moody was amassing enormous amounts of magic within his artifacts while aiming his wand at the rock wall, and Harry forced himself to focus with what time he had remaining. He was almost there, almost…

Boooom!

The entire massive and solid stone-structure exploded all at once, sending rocks and debris flying towards Harry at pulverizing speeds, leaving him no recourse but to hurl his body away from the blast while pouring large amounts of magic into the blunt trauma protection Runes inside of his tattoo. In the next instant, he was smashed into/picked up by pure concussive force, he was carried through the air by the following wall of rocks and debris, and he crash-landed five meters away into a dirty, painful roll.

As Harry's momentum came to an abrupt end, everything hurt, but the most pressing issue was his ears. Harry's ears felt like they'd ruptured from the noise and the concussion blast of the explosion, and he couldn't hear anything other than a sharp ringing sound. For that reason as he scrambled out from under a layer of rocky debris, he channeled some magic directly into healing his ear drums. As he haltingly rose back to his feet his ears painfully popped and sound returned, albeit with a tinny quality that he wasn't used to. With a rapid head-shake, Harry quickly surveyed his body through the thick cloud of dust that he was standing in, and then after discerning that he was cut and bruised and bleeding from his scalp, he extended his aura shroud outwards to get the lay of the land.

At which point, all of Harry's injuries were immediately justified.

Resting precariously atop his newly created stone column, the set of stands, and the students occupying them, remained both intact and whole… An outcome that allowed Harry to Conjure a strong length of rubber from the lowest pew to the ground, recreating the emergency slide used to evacuate airplanes. An idea that was gratifyingly effective, as almost immediately all of the trapped people on the stands began frantically diving down the smooth rubber slide, skidding across the earth in a messy tangle of limbs.

But by then, Harry was jogging away, his focus and his magic moving in more pressing directions. Through the bond, Harry could feel that Fleur, Cedric, Neville, Hermione, Selene, the twins, and several seventh year students had already created a long line of earthworks for people to make a getaway behind and they were now keeping fake Moody occupied with a rapid crossfire of curses. He could also feel through the bond that unlike his earlier attacks, none of their curses appeared to be doing any damage to fake Moody's Barrier, which was causing the seventh years to prioritize retreating.

At this point, Harry knew for sure that he was the primary target for fake Moody, which meant if he made himself a visible target, the self-proclaimed Death Eater would likely turn his focus away from attacking his friends. This was important, because he would not allow his friends to continue being targets against a seemingly impervious, supercharged foe…

Normally, at this point, Harry would become invisible, charge up his magic and then throw everything he had at fake Moody in the form of a Potter family spell. The problem with that idea was that he'd need quite a bit more time than normal to pull it off after using so much of his magic, during which time, one of his friends, his family, maybe even his wife, would experience what he just did behind that damned wall.

Or get themselves blood-boiled, or peeled, or melted, or burned...

Harry bodily shivered even as he started to move.

Despite the fact that his wife was becoming increasingly furious with him, Harry intended to reveal his presence ASAP, because even as Fleur yelled at him to run, she was forced to channel his magic to erect a massive Protego shield, which she used to cover the ad-hoc earthworks that the Hogwarts forces were hiding in, fending off a gigantic Ignis Maxima spell.

Moving at a dead-sprint, Harry exploded out of the dust cloud that was concealing his presence, advancing diagonally towards fake Moody and the dueling platform with a grim, determined expression on his badly bloodied face. At the same time, Harry coordinated through an increasingly enraged Fleur for his friends to capitalize on the distraction that he was about to make however they could, prioritizing ushering out leftover bystanders, creating barriers and traps, calling in the Professors and the Aurors, and above all, keeping themselves safe.

Suffice it to say, Harry was definitely open to Fleur or Hermione having one of their ingenious ideas, but otherwise it was time for him to either buy time for the reinforcements to arrive, or deal with the threat himself, and there wasn't really a third option available. With that knowledge in mind, he vaulted the two and a half meters up to the dueling platform and became nothing but a blur across the concrete. When Harrry finally made his presence known, he wanted it to be in a location where Moody's attacks wouldn't hit anyone else. For that reason, he relocated himself into the middle of the platform, with the sky and the black lake at his back, and he shook out his body as he slid to a stop.

"Hey psycho," Harry called out from on top of the dueling platform with a strong Sonorus Charm in effect, his voice booming around the entire stadium in a way that caused a few lone audience members and defenders to halt in their tracks, before matters of much greater urgency had them moving again.

"Harry~ Potter~," fake Moody slowly drawled out in a silly, immature, twisted and evil rasp, as he equally slowly turned in Harry's direction. "Do you think you have any right whatsoever to judge my mental health? Oh, I am insane... That's an established fact and life is far more interesting this way anyway. On the other hand, you are just as crazy as I am! I almost killed you several times just a few minutes ago, and do - you - know - why… It's because you - are - a - martyr, a sacrificial lamb… Heh… heh heh… A lamb protecting sheep... I appreciate the irony."

Amidst his words, fake Moody radically tilted his head to the side until finally his neck released a resounding pop of unleashed pressure, and then he twirled his wand in his hand with a casual disregard… "You champion these sheep despite the fact you don't have the skill and strength required to do so. Even now, you expose yourself for them and you think I'm too dumb to understand your foolish intentions. Well… I'll get to the sheep eventually, and there's nothing you can do to stop me!"

Along with his threat, fake Moody suddenly cast a strong Bombarda spell at Harry again, but this time the young wizard merely took a step to his right, allowing the explosion curse to sail off harmlessly into the distance. Then the man smiled as if Harry had just made his day and he spread his arms out wide at his sides. "I very graciously allowed you to continue breathing while you held up those kiddies, Potter! I allowed it because my Master demands it of me! I could've ended you right then and there, because you - are - weak! So give me what I'm owed, Potter! Show me why you're so damned special! Show me what I'm missing!"

Now that the spectators were essentially evacuated and there was comparatively little danger of collateral damage, Harry's face became a feral mask of boiling rage as he advanced towards the edge of the platform and the twisted freak that was standing below him. He raised his wand, and he began condensing his magic for a Potter family spell, as he knew he couldn't waste his magic on half-hearted curses. Down on the grass, Fake Moody did the same, his wand tip glowing red with a malevolent energy.

"Fulgar Interius," Harry yelled, releasing a small brightly glowing ball towards Moody's body at blistering speeds, even as he leapt aside from a dark purple curse that he'd never seen before and wanted nothing to do with. Harry's spell was much smaller and faster than Moody's, at least at first glance, but that was the beauty of it. After the blue ball connected with fake Moody's right thigh, all of the electricity in the surrounding area amassed within the ball, it expanded outwards to a circumference of about half a meter, and then discharged into Moody's body with a sharp zapping, crackling sound that filled the entire clearing.

Even as Harry slid to a stop from his sideways evasion, he saw the electrical discharge spell crack open a small hole in the barrier on Moody's right thigh and send the man spinning to the left, and he attempted to capitalize on the weak-point with a series of follow-up curses. Unfortunately for Harry, by the time his Confringo curse slammed into the same area, the Barrier was reformed and Moody was back on the offensive.

And then the duel began, with both Harry and Moody dashing right and left and closing on each other in a hailstorm of curses. Harry cast at least three hundred powerful curses within the next minute, comprised of Bombardas, Confringos, Bone Breakers, Cutters, Gougers, Peelers, blasting Hexes and lots and lots of Shield-breakers, but they all just damaged the man's absurdly strong and unnatural barrier device. On the bright side, fake Moody's magical shields were clearly taking damage, but the man wasn't sitting still and his return curses were strong enough to launch Harry through the air.

Up until this point, Harry's Protego shields were holding up against the man's curses mostly because he was deflecting them rather than receiving them, and he could see that he was currently winning the duel… which is why fake Moody abruptly decided he wasn't playing around anymore…

"Avada Kadavra," fake Moody roared in Harry's direction, leaving the boy no choice but to launch himself to the right and out of the way of the killing curse that moved almost twice as fast as anything so far. Then, just as Harry rolled back to his feet from dodging the instant death curse, he was forced to roll again as yet another killing curse was flying in his direction. Once again, Harry was forced to dodge, but he was also forced to maintain a strong Protego shield to stop a barrage of follow-up cutters.

While spinning through the air, with a brain-swelling spell flying by just inches from his shoulder, Harry waited for the juuuust the right moment, when fake Moody began casting yet another Bombarda spell, at which point he wandlessly activated a very poorly constructed counter cursed directly in its path.

Boooom!

Harry's counter curse was slammed into by Moody's Bombarda just a meter in front of the man, and because it was haphazardly made, it instantly exploded upon making contact.

Moody grunted in pain and reeled backwards several meters because he just took burn and bleeding damage for the very first time, and he was forced to turn away from his adversary until the weakened barrier covering his front finished reforming, forcing him to deflect aside the weaker attacks from the students lobbing spells at him from beyond the earthworks.

Unfortunately for Harry, just as Moody was forced to show his back in a vulnerable position and focus on his wife's attacks, the green eyed wizard caught sight of something in his peripheral vision that caused him to prioritize rapid movement rather than going on the offensive. To his right, hanging just off the edge of the dueling platform, unnoticed until now and right where he'd left her, Harry saw a curled up, and shivering Mary McDonald… Harry had no damned clue why the little witch was still present in such a dangerous location, but he knew he needed to keep her out of the magical crossfire between him and fake Moody, and he started sprinting left in order to draw Moody's attention.

Harry's efforts didn't work. In fact, they appeared to have the direct opposite effect…

When Moody turned back towards Harry with a newly reformed barrier to find the boy moving rather than attacking, his good eye thinned, his electric-blue eye swiveled around the area, and then a maniacal smile slowly tore open his face.

Then fake Moody was laughing, and he was smiling at Harry as if the two of them were sharing a wildly funny joke, all while his wand whipped sideways in Mary's direction and those words erupted from his mouth.

"Bombarda!"

In a timeless moment created by both adrenaline and powerful Occlusions, Harry brainstormed like never before in his life, discarding a hundred different plans in the span of a single moment.

It didn't look good.

Harry knew that if he Transfigured a rock wall in front of Mary it would just explode again, killing the poor girl instantly, and if he used Accio to summon her it would take far too long. Fake Moody's spell was already flying through the air and Accio's need to reach the summoned object in time to pull them back. Sure the spell was fast, far faster than a normal spell, almost but not quite instantaneous, but Harry could already see that it wasn't going to be fast enough for this. He also knew that he couldn't make an aura powered shield strong enough to protect the girl, because he was intimately familiar with the intensity of those spells.

In the end, Harry knew that he needed to physically get to little Mary and move her further back along the platform, which left him recruiting more of Aethir's help than he'd ever used before and sprinting in her direction. Harry's leg muscles rapidly ripped and tore, and his heart felt like it would explode in his chest, but he pushed with everything that he had for more and more speed. The world seemed to slow, sounds disappeared, time seemed to stop, and the world took on an odd grayish cast.

Then, as if by magic, Harry was there, sliding into place next to Mary with not a split-second to spare, with the Protego already growing at the end of his wand, and he deflected yet another Bombarda curse up towards the sky.

Harry grunted at the intense impact on his shield because he'd been moving towards the curse at terrifying speeds and the combined impact was in danger of knocking what air he had left right out of his body. It didn't matter. Harry didn't have time to either celebrate his success or shake off the pain. Harry just held his shield in place as he crab-walked himself backwards, bodily pushing Mary away from the edge of the platform with his shoulders and upper-back.

But that was the moment Harry heard it, and he felt a cold sense of dread descend upon his body… A little girl's voice directly at his back, intoning an absolutely terrifying spell in a truly chilling monotone voice…

"Crucio."

And Harry's entire world instantly became a mass of pain and agony the likes of which he'd never felt before in his life, as lightning and fire coursed throughout his nervous system, his muscles rippled as if they were being torn to shreds, and his skin transcended pain as if he was swimming in acid.

Little Mary McDonald was currently enthralled in an Imperio curse, and she was casting a Crutiatus torture curse directly into Harry's back from point blank range.

Harry's entire body screamed in soul searing pain as he spastically kicked into a knee-jerk, desperate roll to escape the slow moving girl's wand sights, all while he frantically shunted off as much of the pain behind his mindscape barriers as he could… only to find that it only just barely took the edge off.

In the end, the only saving grace Harry had was the fact that Mary was actively resisting the Imperius curse, causing her movements to be very slow and sluggish, her wand-tip wavering in the air, allowing the boy to roll free from the curse, and slap a wandless stunner into her thigh.

Instantly, with no resistance at all, Mary fell asleep curled up in a ball, and Harry banished her body to the farthest side of the dueling platform in a ragdoll roll that he didn't have the time to worry about. Instead, over the next second and a half, Harry rapidly shunted off as much curse pain as possible into his mindscape, regained the full use of his body, and was just in time to react when his magical senses caught more incoming spellfire. Rolling to the right, he created yet another Protego shield, and he deflected several more curses from fake Moody's wand.

Just now, Harry blew it when he failed to notice the unforgivable that was ensnaring Mary's mind.

At the same time, Moody blew it when he underestimated Harry's pain tolerance and the strength of his Occlusions, and he turned his attention towards the curses that were hitting him from behind.

For the moment, Harry and Moody were back to square one, except Harry's body was in terrible shape now, and he shook like a leaf as he rose to his feet.

Time… Without a vat of lava handy to aid in the process, what Harry needed right now was time to amass himself some magic… and Fleur was there in the bond prepared to do what she must.

On the opposite side of the duel, behind fake Moody, Fleur and their friends were currently hidden behind many, many ad-hoc earthwork barriers, where Cedric, Selene and Neville just finished evacuating everyone, while Fleur and Hermione supported Harry from behind.

Fleur was on fire with anger… literally, with licks of pale blue flames trailing her skin in her current state of absolute fury. That cretin, that monster just hit her mate with a Crucio!

At the same time, as Harry rose to his feet, he sent his thoughts in her direction, and Fleur instantly barked out the word, "Listen," at the top of her lungs.

Everyone surrounding Fleur startled, turned towards her, and watched as she took on a truly feral look of utmost malice that had them all flinching in their crouches.

"Harry needs us to give 'iim ten seconds of leeway to reign 'ell on ze lunatic below, and we are going to give eet to 'iim now," Fleur demanded her words made of solid steel. "Do not try to curse ze man. We will Conjure 'eavy objects above 'iim, or utilize ozzer physical approaches. We must dominate ze monster's attention!"

After just a split second spent looking back and forth at each other, Hermione led the charge, as Fred, George, Cedric, Neville, and Selene all jumped to their full heights, spread out along the top of the earthworks and started releasing unmitigated chaos down towards their attacker.

Hermione cast an over-large water-beam spell that Fred and George froze into ice shards, Selene released a cloud of acidic mist that flowed down the earthworks, Neville and Cedric Conjured half a dozen bowling-ball-sized rocks in the air, and Fleur used over two-thirds of her magic to Transfigure a trio of absolutely enormous wolves out of granite, before sending them dashing in Moody's direction.

Finally, Fleur roared like a maniac as she released an extraordinarily powerful Ignis Maxima spell down the slope, and a single moment later, everyone else joined in on her efforts.

The shards of ice caught Moody first, shattering against his shoulder in a way that caused him to swivel in place, only for Conjured boulders to explode into dust on the barrier covering his head and a roiling green mist to further steal his vision. A moment later, when a river of fire flowed around his body, fake Moody raised a glowing red wand-tip up towards his attackers, only to stumble aside when his arm was bitten onto by a large stone-skinned wolf, which exploded a moment later upon his extremely aggressive Barrier.

With a growl of maxed out anger, Fake Moody aimed at and banished away a second wolf before shattering the last one with a Confringo curse from a few meters distance. He swore with a fantastic repertoire as he turned back towards the persistent, annoying weaklings at the top of the hill, and he screamed in their direction that, "these stupid, defenseless sheep were going to die!"

Back up on the platform, a swirling green aurora coalesced around Harry's body as he channeled enormous amounts of power into a useful spell that he'd learned just a couple of weeks earlier, making it bigger, more violent, just… more, in every single way… Then, when he was ready, he waved his wand through the required motions and he screamed out the words at the top of his lungs.

"Altum Bombarda!"

Aiming the spell at the ground three meters in front of fake Moody's body, Harry released the spell, before repeating the process a second, third and fourth time, hemorrhaging huge amounts of magic into every single spell. He dropped to a knee at that point, spitting out yet more blood that dripped from his nose into his mouth, because he was almost completely spent dry of his life giving magic… He stared then, completely mesmerized, watching the ground where fake Moody was finishing off the last stone wolf and was about to attack his family.

….

…

…

BOOOOOM!

Fake Moody's body was at the epicenter of an absolutely enormous upwards eruption of fire, earth and purified force, the earth blasting up into the air in a massive widening dome, launching the man high into the air to careen across the stadium.

Fake Moody screamed as he flew through the air in a rather graceful ragdoll effect, even as his magical barrier finally shattered into tiny, little pieces before shedding off of him like a glowing, red comet-tail. The man flipped, he turned and spun in the air until eventually he slammed back down to the earth with a dull thud within the debris field caused by the destroyed rock wall.

Unbelievably, the man immediately began grabbing at the scattered rocks sitting around him as if he would try to scramble to his feet, but since Harry wasn't taking any chances, he was already vaulting off the platform and staggering in his direction.

Once at point blank range, Harry cast upwards of five Incarcerouses and just as many stunners into the currently debilitated Death Eater… at which point, he finally allowed his trembling legs to give out and he dropped down to his knees. Soon after, Harry began to violently shake with extreme weakness, Cruciatus pain, and injury, and he felt his twitching, spastic, body rapidly losing strength. Of course, Harry's current loss of strength was likely due to the fact that he didn't have enough magic left to cast a single Lumos spell, but in the end the reasons were immaterial. Harry could hardly move a muscle and he was very, very close to passing out onto the rocky ground below him.

Quiet

Crumble

Shatter, clatter, slam (stands collapsing in nearly perfect synchronized movements in several different directions)

Cough

Moan

As Harry looked around himself in a painful, exhausted, newly adrenaline-dumped state, Fleur ran up to him, dropped to her knees at his side, and began running her hands up and down his body to scan for life endangering curse damage. Then, after a full body scan found no immediate magical threats, she began inspecting his bloody nose and fretting over the damage that he'd almost certainly done to his brain. Finally, after noticing that his nose had already stopped bleeding and the man didn't appear to be seconds away from passing out anymore, Fleur scoured the rest of his beaten, burned and bloody body.

It wasn't pretty… but Harry would live.

After dropping from her knees onto her butt in relief, Fleur pierced Harry with a look of intense frustration and then refused to meet his eyes.

Cedric, Hermione, Selene, Neville and the twins arrived at their side not long after, where they stood in a large circle, pointing their wands down at the unconscious, fake Moody. Hermione briefly glomped onto Harry (as she does), the shaking boy returned the hug with as much vigor as his currently broken body was capable of, and slowly, over the next couple of minutes, many random heads began emerging from the different areas of ad-hoc cover created around the arena.

Inevitably, all of these newly emerged people scanned the chaos until they found a very bloody, and shaky Harry Potter resting on his knees, surrounded by two Triwizard Champions and his friends, wands drawn and pointed down at their ex-professor's unconscious body.

FWOOOSH!

Very suddenly and dramatically, Dumbledore arrived on the scene with Fawkes resting upon his shoulder. "What happened here," he demanded, his face stern, his demeanor all business.

Harry slowly turned towards Dumbledore from where he was still kneeling and said "I.. I a..am taking d.. down my O..Occlu..shion shields and pr..projecting what just happened from b..beginning to e..end."

Everyone immediately looked down at Harry in alarm because the teen was visibly twitching and vibrating from Crutiatus curse aftershocks, so the idea that he'd essentially relive the moment just for Dumbledore's convenience seemed unnecessarily painful.

Harry shakily waved off his friend's rising concern because it needed to be him. It needed to be him because he was the only one with the full story and the context involved. It needed to be him because only he could show the Headmaster exactly what happened. Harry raised his aching, rebelling neck up to his Headmaster and locked eyes with the man. "G..Get the gist f..for n..now and I will provide a p..Pensieve memory for you l..later."

Even as he spoke, Harry focused on dragging forth all the little details and forcing them into center stage inside of his Mindscape. His twitching became worse for a few noticeable moments, but then they subsided again as he exerted increased control over his body.

Without even a moment's hesitation, Dumbledore stepped forward and stared down into Harry's eyes, before abruptly blinking, stepping back, and then nodding curtly at the eight of them. The man didn't smile because this wasn't the time for that, but his eyes held that hint of paternal approval that he's so good at conveying… "Harry, I will get this man up to the castle where he can be held for questioning. I know you're badly injured, but I want one of your friends to begin healing you down here so that your mere presence can help keep the injured and frightened students calm."

Turning towards Harry's friends, Dumbledore gestured at the stands. "Can you eight organize any evacuation and healing that needs to be done down here? This man is extremely dangerous and I must give him my full attention, but I will send down Madam Pomfrey as soon as I can. I gather some of you know how to do the Vulnera Sanentur charm?"

"I 'aave mastered ze 'ealing spell you are talking about," Fleur quietly chimed in towards Dumbledore from Harry's right shoulder. "Eef zis boy observes me doing ze charm on 'iis eediotic, 'aalf dead, body, 'ee might just learn ze spell een ze process."

It was no mystery to anyone that Fleur was angry with Harry, but not even Dumbledore was brave enough to come to his defense. Sure, they might all jump in to fight against some magically protected, insane, Death Eater for him, but Fleur Delacour was really just a little too scary.

Hermione bit her lip in frustration and she might have intervened, if Neville hadn't grabbed her arm at just the right moment.

Now wasn't the time and it wasn't the place…

Harry only nodded at his wife and reached out for a hand to his feet, and despite the fact she was clearly super, ultra, mega, pissed off at and not speaking to him at the moment, she took a hold of his hand without a moment's hesitation. The two of them were alive and together and that was all that mattered to him, at least for the moment.

After pulling Harry to his feet, Fleur spent the next minute healing the worst of his physical wounds, during which time, Harry did, in fact, figure out how the advanced healing spell worked as well as how to perform it. Then Harry turned back towards his friends and forced a smile between a mouth that didn't want to cooperate. "Y..You all saved my bacon e..everybody. I don't kn..know what I'd d..do without you g..guys always having my b..back."

Fleur loudly huffed in Harry's direction, making her 'I'm not speaking to Harry' initiative perfectly clear yet again.

Fred and George appeared a little too rattled to joke around but they did extend silent, twin fists in Harry's direction, which he managed to tap with his own.

Hermione broke into tears, and hugged Harry gently again before moving on to heal whoever she could.

Selene smiled tiredly, gently patted Harry on the shoulder and waved as she moved off to help Hermione.

Neville also gently patted Harry on the shoulder as he gave his friend a meaningful look that accurately conveyed his condolences.

Cedric just smiled and shook his head at Harry's gratitude, his incredulity plain and for obvious reasons.

Harry went with Fleur to the north side of the stands, while Cedric went with Cho looking through the south side. Everyone else split up going east or west and soon after they were all digging through the destroyed stands.

Harry was in the thick of it at the moment, and he was foisting a lot of curse pain behind the walls of his Occlusions on an ongoing basis, because there were people in the rubble and he wanted to help… At the same time, he knew that his current actions were counterproductive, since Cruciatus pain isn't like normal pain. The curse is specifically designed to be experienced by the person that it's afflicted upon, and since it targets the soul, no amount of avoidance will allow you to ignore or dismiss it. For that reason, while a skilled Occlumancer like Harry may be able to shunt aside the pain for a little while, it will not fade or go away in the process. The pain resides where it is caged until it's finally confronted and experienced.

For now however, Harry began physically moving wood piles in order to look for anyone stuck or stranded inside the rubble piles, moving slowly but methodically as his magic core converted sunlight into power. Soon enough, he would have the magic necessary to do most things unimpeded, but he didn't think he'd use any magic for now, for fear that his wife would kill him.

Harry felt like he was walking on pins and needles at the moment for more than one reason. Reason number one was that he had no idea if they were going to find dead bodies in the rubble. Reason number two was that his wife wasn't even looking at him as they worked.

As time went by, more and more students returned to the ruined stadium and began levitating or banishing rubble, but since nobody was approaching Harry and Fleur, it looked like there was an aversion charm cast on their bodies. Harry wasn't surprised by anyone's reaction because he currently looked like he just took part in a slaughter, and Fleur was currently in full bitch mode, being about as unapproachable as it's possible for her to become (very, very unapproachable).

Truth be told, Harry completely understood why Fleur was angry with him and was berating himself for those very same actions, or at least, his lack of tactical cunning. The problem was that Harry had been provided with very few acceptable choices other than the ones that he'd decided on.

Hundreds of living breathing people, like poor little Mary McDonald, her little friends, innocent kids having a good time while cheering on their school. Harry couldn't, he wouldn't, simply run away.

Still…

Harry didn't know how to apologize for being too weak and stupid when it really mattered. How do you apologize for not being talented enough, strong enough or smart enough? Even harder, how do you apologize for not being selfish enough? How do you make it right when you aren't able to prevent a situation from developing around you and being powerless to change it?

In the end, Harry put himself and by extension his wife, in mortal peril, because she would not survive his untimely death. For the entire duration of the attack, he forgot that he wasn't just living for himself anymore, and that his actions, although unintentional, could be considered a betrayal.

Ugh...

In the end, Harry distracted himself by just repeatedly putting one foot in front of the other and diligently searching through the ruined stands.

When Harry first saw Madam Pomfrey running in his direction, he started pointing in the direction of a gathering of bruised and cut up students near the platform. It was only after she ran directly up to him with a look of alarm on her face that he remembered the state of his body.

Raising his arms at his side, Harry shrugged off Pomfrey's concerns and gestured for her to move on to the others. "I w..will walk to the ho..hospital w..wing by m..my-self Po..Poppy. I don't h..have any..thing wrong w..with me th..that you can ev..en help m..me with right now a..any..way."
With that said, Harry turned away from his favorite healer and began sifting through the wreckage again.

"Tell me this isn't what it looks like," Poppy demanded while piercing Fleur with her eyes.

"Ee was subjected to ze Cruciatus curse for a leetle under five seconds," Fleur admitted while looking completely tortured herself.

Turning back towards Harry, who was lifting some wooden rubble and scanning the spaces between the broken beams beneath, the aged healer shook her head at the unbelievable madness of the boy, pointed her wand at his back and intoned a quiet Stupify spell that nonetheless had a lot of intent couched behind it.

At first, Fleur was surprised by Madam Pomfrey's actions, but after that single moment of confusion, she nodded her head and she pulled out her wand.

Harry was kneeling down to look below some support beams for anyone who might be hurt or still in hiding when it happened… All of the sudden, he felt a sharp impact against his back and he began to feel woozy. In fact, he dropped to his hands and knees before shaking off the lethargy and straightening to his knees. Then a second impact hit his back, and Harry briefly dropped back to all fours before drunkenly turning in place with his wand raised in self-defense.

What Harry saw confused his magic muddled mind.

Poppy and Fleur were standing there, their wands pointed at his body.

"Stupify, both women intoned, this time together, hitting Harry in the chest from point blank range.

This time Harry knew for sure what was happening, as he slumped to the ground and the world went dark.

To Be Continued

Author's Note 1:

Because I never explained anything about Crouch's barrier in this chapter, you may believe I nerfed our MC. I didn't. I will explain just how awful and powerful his artifact is in the chapters that follow.

Author's Note 2:

If you like my writing, want to check on my release schedule + want to help support me, consider visiting my P-a-t-r-e-o-n page

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