Pre-Chapter A/N: More chapters on my patreon(https://www.patreon.com/c/Oghenevwogaga)— same username as here and link in bio. Experimenting with two chapters a week, we'll see how long I can keep this up for.
I woke up chained to a statue. My wand was nowhere near me. I would feel it with my magic if it were close enough to summon—being anywhere within a few inches of any part of my body. Once I had ascertained that much, I began looking about my surroundings. They were not hard to recognize. It was a graveyard. A familiar graveyard, and I stood chained to a familiar grave. Tom Riddle, Son of Thomas and Mary Riddle, 1905-1943. Well, that answered the question of who hired those mercenaries to kidnap me. Voldemort. And there was only one reason he could have wanted that.
"Harry Potter. Finally awake, I see." And I struggled to turn my head towards the voice. At least I did for a few seconds until the statue I was chained to moved to give me a better view. Voldemort. He stood there in all his glory, skin pale as a corpse, nose gone in place of two slits that contracted and expanded every second or so in some facsimile of human breath because his thing was far from human, cheekbones so high that they were only a step away from being horns instead, and a tall, lithe frame that seemed to occupy every bit of space in my line of sight. I could see to both sides of him, yes, but it was like everything that was not him did not matter. That was how thoroughly he grabbed attention and caught the eye.
"It is a pleasure indeed to meet you in the flesh, finally," he said, voice sibilant and barely above a whisper but carrying about the place with ease.
"I wish I could say the same," I said, affecting my most unbothered tone even while I knew I was so thoroughly in this monster's mercy. All I had to hope for was that his pride was enough to stop him from killing me while unarmed. Not like giving me my wand would mean all that much for my chances, much as it galled me to admit it.
"So I am sure that you find yourself wondering just how you have gotten here, and just how I have returned to my full glory," he said, beginning what I could sense would be a villainous monologue of epic proportions. Normally, I would cut in here with a bit of sarcasm and wit, but the lack of my wand and the present situation meant that pissing off this creature—for that was what Tom Marvolo Riddle had turned himself into—would be far from wise.
"Most assuredly." The sharp look those red eyes pinned me with showed that I hadn't done as good a job of keeping my disinterest out of my voice as I was supposed to. How disappointing. I felt a knife begin to dig into my skull, trying to bypass my mental shields. I locked up like Fort Knox and turtled behind my Occlumency, clearing my mind of everything other than the desire to take a shit.
"Hahaha!" Even his laughter was decidedly unnatural.
"It seems Dumbledore has done a better job of teaching you than I expected," he said with amusement, and the mention of the name was enough to cause a flare.
"Not Dumbledore then? So tell me, Harry Potter, where did one such as you get such a command over Occlumency?" he asked, diving into my mind again. This time, I was ready. I cleared my mind with all I had, not even giving him a single thread to latch onto. He fed me thoughts, feelings, images, emotions, but I kept myself locked tight, not responding to any of them.
"Crucio!" he hissed and I finally understood the Longbottoms. It felt like every nerve on my body was being grated and cut in half while being roasted over an open flame at the same time. He kept the torture spell on for only a few seconds, but it felt like minutes as I found myself biting down on my tongue to resist the urge to scream. I could not grant him the satisfaction. Never.
"Legilimens!" he hissed immediately, and he was able to catch a glimpse of the Chamber of Secrets, but I cleared my mind a second later, not giving him anything. So this was his strategy then. The Cruciatus to weaken, and then Legilimency to penetrate. Fuck, it was effective.
"Crucio!" again. And just like I had never been subjected to the spell before, the pain renewed itself. I would have expected that some prior exposure to the spell would grant resistance, but there was nothing of the sort forthcoming. It hurt even more than it had the first time.
"Legilimens!" right after, and this time it took even longer for me to clear my mind, but all he had been able to see were glimpses of any training sessions with Flitwick.
"Excellent, excellent. Most would not last this long, I assure you, Harry Potter. But your stubbornness does infuriate me," he hissed with a laugh.
"Crucio!" And once again, I felt pain beyond pain. Pain that made me feel like a knife was being taken to all my delicate bits even as I was drowned in a vat of acid while being electrocuted at the same time. Needless to say, even if I did already say it, it was a fuck-ton of pain and an experience I would be loathe to repeat. Still, I did not want to give in. Voldemort would not be beating me today. Focusing on that thought did not allow me to just ignore the Cruciatus, but it gave me something to focus on even as my body was put through the worst kind of pain over and over again.
"Legilimens!" he said with a laugh, and this time, there was no lag. My thoughts and feelings were already locked up tighter than a bank vault by the time his probe cut into my mind. There was nothing for him to find, and so he found nothing. I could see the rage in his deep crimson orbs as he took a step back from me.
"Skilled, Harry Potter. More skilled than anyone your age has any right to be." he said with a hiss before he turned himself, whispering to himself.
Next thing I knew, his head snapped back in my direction, "Crucio!" and pain. Just pain. Raw, unimaginable pain. Like the world itself was spinning and pain was the only thing that I knew. I felt myself bite into my tongue so hard that I could taste blood in my mouth as I stopped myself from screaming only by the barest measures.
"Legilimens!" This time, instead of sitting passively by and allowing him to just have his way, I met his probe of Legilimency with one of my own. I knew his Occlumency was impeccable and there would be no chance of me getting anything from him, but I had a plan. A plan? Ha. That was a generous way of referring to what was at best a harebrained scheme. Instead of trying to take anything out, I shoved something in.
All the pain that he had flooded my body with from his barrage of Cruciatuses became his as I took advantage of his surprise and failure to clear his mind on time to push it all at him. It was far from delicate, what I did. Far from efficient either. It took more mental power than it had any right to, but I did not care. All I knew was that I was not the only one in pain anymore as Voldemort screamed out before falling to one knee. He tossed me from his mind with rage, but that respite was all I needed.
I felt at the chains holding me down and with a growl brought all my rage to bear and focused on my magic.
"You impudent mongrel. You dare? Avada Kedavra!" Voldemort turned his wand upon me from that position, but I managed to burn through two links of the chain right in time and I dove at him, allowing the green bolt of magic to fly over my head and destroy the statue instead of causing me any harm. Voldemort tried to fire a spell at me, but his body seized up at the last moment, an effect of the Cruciatus, and I landed right on top of him. We wrestled for his wand, but where he was clearly new to his form, I had had mine for a while now and had been doing more than my fair share of physical training.
When a bolt of magic hit us and wrenched me away, sending me flying until my back hit the base of a statue, I had already grabbed a hold of the wand.
"My wand, Barty. He has my wand!" Voldemort hissed, but if Bartemius Crouch Junior felt this would be a repeat of the last time we fought, then he was dead wrong.
I was on the floor. I was in pain, my hands were spasming out of control, and it was all I could do to remain focused enough to cast magic, but that was enough. I deflected his Disarming Charm. My aim was off. Instead of hitting him, it flew over his shoulder, but that was enough. I rolled to the side to avoid a blasting curse, and I countered with a second of focus and a large black spell, a flesh-eating necrosis curse that forced even Voldemort to move to the side. I looked down at the wand in my hand, the bone handle, the darker shade of the wood, the longer length, thinner girth. This was not my wand, but it responded just as easily as the holly ever had.
Crouch dodged the spell and returned fire with a Killing Curse. I ducked, knees trembling as I did so. "Don't kill him, Crouch. He is mine!"
"Yes, master." The second Crouch turned, I struck. My fingers and arms were shaking too much for anything too precise. So fuck precision. This was the time for only one kind of magic.
And thankfully, I had just the thing. "Fulgur!" I spat out, sending lightning right up his arse. To Crouch's credit, he managed to raise a shield in time, but there was little his flimsy Protego could do to save him from an elemental spell of that level. He was sent flying in the distance, most assuredly dead. I turned the wand to Voldemort but was forced to nearly drop it as I took a bone breaker to the shoulder. My other shoulder. Who the fuck had such terrible aim?
"Drop the wand, Potter!" I heard the rat's voice before I saw him. And he hadn't come alone. "Oh, fuck you all!" I said, near drowning in pain even as I recognized that the opportunity had passed. The only way I would kill Voldemort here would be if I was willing to do so at the cost of my own life. And there was no chance in hell that Voldemort was worth that much.
"Fiendfyre!" I spat, fueling the spell with all my hatred and fury. In my mental state, there was no chance I'd manage to keep the spell under control, so I did not even try. I fed it all the magic I could, and then unleashed it the second it breathed air for the first time. It turned to me first, but before it could devour me, I turned on the spot, and apparated the fuck out of the place.
XXXXXX - SIRIUS BLACK
He looked around, and noted that he had been one of the first to finish with his opponents, but that meant little as the others were equally rounding up. The attackers had been passable wizards, but barely above average in truth. They'd used the dark arts liberally, but beyond that there was little finesse or skill to their assault. Just the sheer weight of their numbers and the fact that they had used hostages to keep Dumbledore occupied had kept them in the fight for this long, and even the hostages had now been freed, and Dumbledore with a couple flicks and swishes of his wand had bound the rest of the assailants in ropes that constricted them so tightly that they could not even move without moaning in pain.
"What's going on up there?" he asked, pointing at the floating stage that represented the maze and the final part of the third task. The transparency enchantment had failed and now he was just looking straight up at stone. The relay and broadcasting enchantments that followed the champions everywhere had failed as well, the feed dying and the screen showing naught but static.
"Where is my godson?" he asked, talking to both no one and everyone as he made his way towards Dumbledore. Whatever disagreements he had with the man, the man was surely the only one who could tell him any of what had been going on.
"What happened?"
"I have no idea at present, Mister—" Dumbledore began before shutting up as there was a grinding sound from above all of them before a horn started to blow from nowhere and everywhere at once.
"What was that?"
"Nothing good. Come with me." Sirius followed, not even realizing just how easily he had fallen into the role of a subordinate. They walked straight to the center of the field, picking up Flitwick, Sprout, McGonagall, and Slughorn as they did so.
"What's happening, Albus?" McGonagall asked as we walked, the sound of the horn still blaring.
"Well, that was the sound of one or more of the enchantments on the floating platform failing," he said, and Sirius looked up to note that indeed the floating platform was beginning to stop doing just that—floating. It was now becoming the falling platform.
"What?"
"Don't panic. There are backup enchantments to ensure that the platform lands safely even if it can no longer keep—" Dumbledore stopped as suddenly the horn turned into a bell that rang at such a high pitch that it made Sirius want to shit his ears to block out the noise.
"Wingardium Leviosa!" Dumbledore screamed, wand pointed straight above them. Sirius looked up to see the platform was falling much faster than it had earlier.
"Some help, if you would?" Dumbledore asked, tone casual like he was not supporting all the weight of a small island on his lonesome.
"Wingardium Leviosa!" Sirius incanted even as he noticed the Professors by his side doing the same. The platform came to a complete stop under the influence of their combined magic. The weight of the island was immense as Sirius felt it begin to press down on him and resist his spell.
"Wingardium Leviosa!" more voices joined theirs, and Sirius felt the burden ease. He turned to the side and found the ICW representatives as well as Maxime rushing over with their wands pointed upwards.
"What do we do, Dumbledore?" Maxime asked. "The Champions are still up there," she continued. Harry, Sirius thought. Harry is still up there.
"You will continue to hold this up; please give me as much time as possible as I work to restore the enchantments," the old man said.
"Don't be silly, Dumbledore. The enchantments were cast by dozens of masters working in concert. They are not something that you can just restore on a whim. Instead, we must trigger the remote destruction of the platform. If it lands, it will cause tremendous loss of life. Far more will be lost than the three who are on the platform now," one of the ICW women spoke, the dark-skinned one. Sirius turned his gaze to her. Only the fact that he had to hold the platform up was keeping him from cursing her tongue off. The glares Maxime, McGonagall, and Sprout sent her way made it clear that he was not the only one to be having similar thoughts.
"I will, of course, do my best. And I will trust the rest of you to do the same. The strain will be immense. It will feel like all the world lies on your shoulders, but I trust you all to hold this burden," he said, and Sirius had to swear the old man was taking the mickey, because holding this shit up wasn't that hard.
"Now brace yourselves," Dumbledore said, before putting his wand down, and then Sirius understood. It was like a mountain on his shoulders. Like he was lifting all the world and then some. Was this what Atlas felt when Zeus placed the sky atop him? Just how much of the weight had Dumbledore been holding?
The man looked no different even as Sirius could see the others near buckle from the weight.
"As much time as you can spare me, if you would," Dumbledore said before he began to drag his wand through the air like he was conducting an orchestra. Charms had been one of Sirius' favorite subjects back at Hogwarts, but he hadn't ever gotten advanced enough to delve into complex enchantments the way Lily had. And he knew that even Lily would be stumped by what the Headmaster was doing.
The man drew runes in the air from memory with no problem, and then dispelled them before starting again. Every once in a while he would nod his head like something was working before shaking it and starting over.
"Dumbledore!" Sirius heard McGonagall groan, and he felt it. Holding that island up was easily the hardest thing he ever had to do, and he could feel his magic running out.
"Just a minute more," he said, having already used close to four minutes with his trial and error. This time, when he began, he did not stop. He drew rune after rune, layering them on top of each other in some cases, and then side by side in others.
"We can't hold this for much longer, Dumbledore!" It was the dark-skinned woman now. She had fallen to her knees. The other woman with her had done the same, and so had both Sprout and McGonagall. Sirius could feel blood pouring from his nose, but he remained on his feet. Years in Azkaban had taught him to ignore his body's pain.
"One second!" The old man said as he drew the last rune with a flourish and then began to whisper in a language Sirius could recognize as Greek. The runes flew from him, shooting in the air and attaching themselves to the platform. Sirius felt the weight he was holding stop as the platform stopped pushing down on them. Instead, it began to float upwards again. Dumbledore pointed his wand at the giant viewing board, and their views of the Champions returned. Cedric lay bound in chains, while Fleur sat against a hedge, looking at her wand. Harry was nowhere to be seen, his screen only showing the empty podium where the winner should have arrived.
"Where is Harry, Dumbledore?" He turned to the old man.
"Now, that is a good question," he said, sounding equally lost for the first time Sirius had seen.
A/N: So what do you think? Yeah, we get Voldy coming back while Harry is unconscious because he has Barty Crouch here and Crouch seems like he'd be careful enough after losing to Harry in the past to avoid taking the risk of having him about. And yeah, if you notice Harry leaves with Voldemort's wand. That will matter a lot moving on. Next four chapters up on patreon(https://www.patreon.com/c/Oghenevwogaga)(same username as here and link in bio), support me there and read them early.