fanfiction.lol^{fun, silly, low-stakes fandom}

Chapter Text

“Dad, dad! We are going to see Rose and Hugo!” Albus exclaimed as he ran up to Harry, and grabbed onto Harry’s leg, jumping up and down unable to contain his excitement.

“Are you going with us?” James asked ever so sweetly, even if Harry knew that James already knew the answer. It had been the same answer for as long as he’d been alive. 

Even if Harry tried to keep work and his homelife separate, it didn’t work like that in practice. 

“No, unfortunately not. I have work to do, but have fun meeting Rose and Hugo. You have been talking about this for half a week now”. Harry sighed with a smile, as he put on Lily her coat, and kissed Ginny on the cheek. 

He waved through the window as the snowflakes stuck to Ginny’s fiery red hair, and James threw himself on the ground rolling around in the thirty centimeter thick snow. Ginny had to chase after him, tripping in the snow, but Albus on the other hand waved back at Harry, holding Lily’s hand, steering her against the floopoint about fifty meters from their home. They were unable to keep a floo in the house, since people kept popping up uninvited. People that wanted to thank Harry for saving the world. 

Harry stayed at the window until his family had disappeared into the floo, he then turned back to his work. He was brewing a potion, something he had found himself doing more and more often as time passed. He was good at it, since there no longer was a professor or other students trying to ruin it for him. 

He had been working on the potion for months, trying to find a way to get it to work like it should. During the last test he did, it had worked a little, but it didn’t keep the frog he tried it on alive for more than a few extra minutes. Harry had researched everything about life and death, and about magic that could keep someone alive, and that could kill someone. In the Draught of Living Death there were ingredients used to do the opposite of what they were supposed to. 

Harry had figured out that Basilisk Venom was the fastest killing thing on the planet, that wasn’t a curse. It could kill a human in less than ten minutes, and make them unconscious after only three.

The steel cup was burning hot in his hand, and the venom looked black. It was from the basilisk that Harry had killed when he was twelve, but Harry had no idea on which colour the venom was supposed to have. He had tried to research it, but it was impossible to find anything about it anywhere. He had asked people who had handled creatures before, but none of them had an answer to him. The black venom, and the burning hot cup in his hand didn’t do much to tell him if it was supposed to look like that or not.

“The worst thing that can happen is that it doesn’t work”. Harry mumbled to himself as he placed down the cup with Basilisk venom and poured one fifth of the potion into another cauldron. The black venom, that had taken him weeks to extract from the basilisk teeth, was thick and the smell stung in his nose. It dripped slowly into the potion and when everything was blended, Harry waited. The potion slowly changed colour from a light green to a dark green, almost black. 

Harry took a spoonful out of it and dripped on one of the frogs, after he had cut it open. The wound sealed, but right before it was completely sealed the frog exploded. Harry could not find parts of the frog. He found parts of the body and legs, but nothing of the head. Not an eye, not any part of the brain, nothing. It confused Harry but he wiped everything clean and turned back to the cauldron, only to see something he really didn’t want to see. Bubbles, big bubbles in the potion, making it look almost exactly like tar. One of the bubbles popped and it smelled like rotten flesh, the smell so intense that it made Harry gag. 

He turned off the heat, but nothing worked. It was like the potion was boiling on its own. The bubbles were popping more and more often, and Harry could feel the heat from the potion from meters away. He searched for his wand, but couldn’t find it. His back hit the wall, as the potion started making sounds. 

Harry stayed back against the wall for over ten minutes, before the potion suddenly grew quiet. No popping bubbles, no gurgling noises, but quiet. Eerily quiet. He slowly walked toward the cauldron and when he looked down into it, everything grew black. 

He screamed higher than he ever had before, the pain being more than he could take. The floor came closer and closer, and he could almost not open his eyes. The pain was something he had only felt once before, in his second year at Hogwarts when he got the basilisk tooth in his arm. Fawkes had healed him that time, but now there was no one to heal him. Harry knew that he would be dead in minutes, so he curled up in a ball, hoping his tears would clean his cheeks from the burning.

He thought about Ginny, her smile, her laugh. Them flying through the sky the day she got accepted as a professional Quidditch player. A chaser. They had loved it, and then she had gotten pregnant with James. James Sirius Potter. The sweetest little boy you could imagine, but two years later Albus Severus Potter was born, and they understood that James was not as sweet as they thought. He was kind and he loved his brother, but he was a mischief maker, just like his namesakes had been. Albus on the other hand was the kind, smart and thoughtful of the two. He didn’t like to joke around as much as James did, and he spent much more time with Lily when she was born one year after him.

Lily Luna Potter was the smartest of the three. She loved learning, and she had started using wandless magic before she turned one and a half. Neither Harry nor Ginny told her not to, and Hermione taught her everything she wanted to know. Lily usually never talked, and Harry knew that it was since she was shy and she didn’t like to talk. She almost never said anything, but when she said something it was very important. 

Harry felt himself fall into the space between life and death as he closed his eyes and curled together even tighter. Every muscle in his body cramping.

“Harry, Harry, wake up!” Someone shouted. 

Harry opened his eyes and looked into a freckled face with a pair of deep blue eyes. A pair of eyes he had looked into so many times before. Ron’s blue eyes, and freckled face, even if he looked a lot younger than he did before Harry died.

“Ron?” Harry sounded as confused as he was, and he lifted his hands to see that he actually was physical. He was very confused as to why he still was alive, if he was alive…? 

“It’s today the students from the other schools arrive. Dumbledore said they will be here after lunch, and we are excused from all our lessons today, not that Hermione will be happy”. Ron laughed, as Harry tried to figure out what time it was. 

“You said the students from the other schools are arriving. You mean the Durmstrang and Beauxbatons students?” He said as he pulled on one of his schoolrobes, and tied his tie. 

“Harry, are you having memory loss? Everyone has been talking about this since Dumbledore revealed everything about the Triwizard tournament during the welcoming feast”. Ron sounded confused, worried and excited, all in two sentences. 

“No, I’m just tired. I didn’t sleep very well last night”. Harry lied as soon as the thought popped up in his head. “I was too excited for today”. 

Ron nodded thoughtfully, and the second both of them had clothes on Ron pulled Harry down from their dorm, into the common room, where Hermione was already waiting. She smiled happily at them, but especially against Ron, something Harry noticed only because he knew she was in love with him at the time. Ron was oblivious enough to not notice how Hermione hanged on his arm, trying to get him to notice that she was a girl, and Harry wanted to facepalm. He had been just as oblivious to it when he was younger, and he was still sad about that. Everything could have turned out very differently if he just had noticed things. 

“Harry, you are very quiet today. Why?” Hermione sounded concerned when she said it, but she kept smiling, since she had whispered it in his ear.

Harry smiled back at her, and slowed down so there would become a gap between the three of them, and the other gryffindors on the way to breakfast. “I didn’t sleep very well last night, and I have a headache right now”. The headache part was actually true. Harry had forgotten how bad the horcrux-headaches could get, since it was over thirteen years since he had gotten them last.

Hermione gasped and grabbed his arm, harder than he thought she could, and she looked him straight into the eyes, and whispered “Is it the scar again?”

Harry nodded sternly and Hermione placed a hand over her mouth, like she was shocked, but Harry noticed that she was smiling. “It is nothing, I feel like I am going to have a migraine. He is most likely getting stronger, and that means I have to be more careful”. 

Hermione nodded, and they continued to walk, not finding Ron anywhere. She sighed, as Harry smiled, and almost started to laugh. He had seen Ron get pulled away by the twins, who both looked very happy. It was long since he saw George that happy, but in this timeline, or universe, or whatever it now was, Fred had not yet lost his life. 

“Where’s Ron?”

“The twins pulled him away, somewhere in the middle of our discussion. I’m sure we will find him at the table together with them”. Harry said, as he felt his stomach coo on the thought of food. It was like he had not eaten for months, or even years. 

Harry wondered how long time had passed in his original timeline, since he had decided that after he died he was transported into another timeline, for a while, because it was so comical that it couldn’t be real. He couldn’t have gotten another chance at life just because. Fate wouldn’t give him that chance. 

Breakfast had been good, and talking about the students from the other schools was fun. Harry knew things that the others didn’t and he had almost said things that he knew he shouldn’t reveal, but most of the times he had been able to say that it was something he believed, and not something that was true. 

Lunch had been long, and everyone had been chattering around him. The headache Harry had, had gotten worse and worse during the day, and this time around he knew why. Voldemort was happy, he knew that Crouch would place Harry’s name in the Goblet of Fire, and Harry would have to compete. 

That was the one thing Harry wasn’t scared about. He was not scared, or even afraid that he wouldn’t survive the tasks. He had done it once, when he was fourteen years old, and this time he had the mental capacity of a thirty year old. Not that he had tried his magic abilities since he woke up, but he knew that he was stronger than when he actually was fourteen. 

“Harry! Hermione! Look!” Ron screamed in excitement as the Beauxbatons carriage landed right in front of them. 

Harry smiled, as he had forgotten how magnificent the carriage actually was. It was a light blue colour with hints of green in it, and the winged horses stomped into the ground. Most of the students looked surprised, or even scared, but as Harry looked around Draco Malfoy stood leaned against a wall, with one of his eyebrows raised. Theodore Nott stood beside him, talking to him, with the same nonchalant look on his face, but his eyes looked weird, like they knew too much, but Harry didn’t care very much. Crabbe and Goyle stood on one side of them, with their mouths open staring at the carriage.

It took Harry a few seconds to notice that the Durmstrang boat had started to come out of the water, since the Beauxbatons students were getting out of the carriage. Harry looked over but estimated that there was still over ten minutes before the boat would reach the shore, and he turned back to the Beauxbatons students. Fleur was walking together with Madame Maxime, and behind them there was a blend of both girls and boys, walking two and two, almost gliding inside. 

“Harry, the girl walking with the headmistress, did you see her?” Ron asked, almost salivating over Fleur. 

Harry couldn’t help but roll his eyes, looking over at Ron. Hermione had already elbowed him in the side like five times, but Harry was not happy with that. “Ronald Bilius Weasley, do not even think about it. Sure, she was beautiful, most likely has veela blood in her because of the allure, but she is over 17, so at least three years older than you. Secondly you don’t know her. Look over at the Durmstrang students now. They are leaving the ship now”. 

Ron sighed, but turned his head only to see Viktor Krum and start fangirling directly. Harry almost started laughing, but he kept quiet. In their old life, back right before Hermione became minister of magic she had invited Viktor back, and Ron had still been fangirling over him. He finally got his autograph, and Harry and Viktor kept in touch after that. This time Harry was going to try and save Ron the embarrassment of everything that happened to him in their fourth year. Including telling Ron to ask Hermione out. Ron was the most oblivious person Harry knew, and that hadn’t let go of him in adulthood either. 

The Durmstrang students walked out of the boat wearing red coats, with fur collars. Clothes that seemed too hot for the quite mild October weather in Great Britain. In the front was the headmaster Igor Karkaroff and Viktor Krum, behind them the rest of the boys walked… No, marched, and lastly marched the girls in the exact same outfit, just wearing skirts in the deepest of reds, looking like they had been dyed in blood. 

When all the students had filled the Great Hall it was time for the Durmstrang and the Beauxbatons students to choose where to sit. Harry expected it to go exactly like it did in his last life, the Durmstrang students sitting at the Slytherin table, and the Beauxbatons students at the Ravenclaw table, but this time Viktor steered his steps against the Gryffindor table. 

Ron’s eyes had widened, and so had many others, but Harry didn’t really care, he was just surprised that Viktor hadn’t decided to sit down at the Slytherin table, since Karkaroff most likely told him to sit there. 

“Can we sit here?” He asked Harry with an ever so slight smile, and Harry could see that he had ignored half the table, just to ask him. 

“Sure, take a seat”. 

The Durmstrang students spread along the table, but Viktor sat in between Harry and Hermione, and Ron, who sat straight across from them, stared shamelessly at Viktor. Harry threw an apple on Ron that hit him straight in the face. 

“If you don’t know who I am, I’m shocked but I can still… ehh… introduce myself, I’m Viktor Krum”. He looked uncomfortable as he talked, and Harry could hear that he was nervous. 

“I’m Harry Potter, and I don’t know if you know who I am, and if you don’t, we kindly keep it like that. This is Hermione Granger, and that’s Ron Weasley. You can ignore him”. Harry smiled at Viktor, who smiled back, ever so slightly. 

Ron looked angry at Harry for a few seconds, but he seemed to find the reasoning in what Harry said long before Harry actually had time to say sorry.

“Harry Potter. I haff heard about you. You saved the vizarding vorld, right?

“Well… You can kind of say that. I was a baby at the time, but yes, in most people’s eyes, I saved the wizarding world. In my own eyes I did not. Voldemort never left Great Britain, and even if he did he was nothing like Grindelwald or some of the other Dark Lords. 

“Grindelwald. He vas a student at Durmstrang when he was young. His… ehh… Mark is still engraved into the vall of the school”. Viktor only picked at his food, like it was something that wasn’t edible. “Most of us valk around it, it still gives off bad magic”. 

“That sounds horrible, good thing Dumbledore defeated him”. Hermione said with a smile, even though she sent Dumbledore a look of confusion. 

“Vot?”

“You didn’t know Dumbledore defeated Grindelwald?”

“Yes, I knew that. I’m confused. Dumbledore vorked vith Grindelwald in the beginning. You knew that? Ve are taught everything about Grindelwald and Dumbledore. Someone found his… ehh… dnevnitsi… That is… D… Diaries. Someone found his old… ehh… Diaries, and they talked about…” Viktor lowered his voice significantly, and shot a look over his shoulder to look at Dumbledore. “They mostly talk about the relationship between Dumbledore and Grindelwald… Their romantic relationship, and then how either Dumbledore, Dumbledore’s brother or Grindelwald managed to kill the youngest Dumbledore child. Ariana”.

Harry stared at Viktor for about ten seconds, before he looked over at Dumbledore. Did you have to befriend your worst enemy to be able to kill them? Would that have made everything easier in his last life. 

None of them said anything more after that. They all ate in silence, the only thing sound hearable was the sound of silverware scraping against their plates. 

“Dear students and especially our guests, welcome to the feast. We welcome the Durmstrang students!” All the Durmstang students stood up and everyone clapped for them, before they took their seats again. “We also welcome the Beauxbatons students to Hogwarts!” The Beauxbatons students did the exact same, only that they bowed deeply against Dumbledore, and then their own Headmistress, Madame Maxime. “We will open our hearts for each other, and after we have done that I will tell you everything you need to know about the Triwizard Tournament”. 

The Great Hall grew quiet, and the Hogwarts students were just as confused as the foreign students were. The hall lit up, with thousands of tiny fires all around, above the head of each one of the students and professors. The flames burned in the shape of hearts. Hearts that slowly opened revealing small notes that fell down on every single student and professors, heads at the same time.

Harry picked up his note and unfolded it so see one sentence on the paper. 

Love Your Enemy, And Then Your Friend, 

More Than You Ever Love Yourself

He smiled ever so lightly and looked over to see that Viktor had not yet opened his note. Ron and Hermione held up the notes against each other smiling, and Harry showed them his, reading theirs. Ron’s was weird. 

Love Your Friend, 

Until You Can’t

It was a hint that he should fall in love with Hermione, that he should notice her most likely, but it was too real. It felt like this was something the note knew about. Something the note should not know about. Harry’s own was weirder in the actual script but Ron’s was suspiciously accurate to what actually was happening. 

Hermione’s was the most normal one even if it too hinted to her that someone already loved her. 

Love Him, 

Or Lose Him

It was shorter than either of Harry’s and Ron’s but somehow it had more meaning to it than any of their notes had. 

Harry once again looked over at Viktor who had not yet opened his note, and Harry was not going to pressure him to look at it in front of everybody. 

“Now when everyone has opened their hearts, and filled their stomachs, I can take first the Hogwarts rules for our guests, before I tell you about the Triwizard Tournament. The first and most important rule is that the forbidden forest is just that. Forbidden. No one goes inside, unless you don’t want to get out. No one is allowed to use magic on someone else, unless it is during a lesson with a professor’s permission. Our guests will join the seventh year, and some of them might join the sixth if that is the year they are in, but most of them will be in the seventh year.” Viktor looked a little distressed when Dumbledore said that he would be joining the seventh year. “Then there will be no Quidditch matches this year, since we have you guests here, but the pitch will be open for everyone who wants to play on their own, until early April when it closes for the rest of the school year.” Most of the students sighed, and Harry noticed that Viktor didn’t say anything, or make any sound at all. “Now, to the Triwizard Tournament.”

Filch carried in a heavy box, and placed it down right in front of Dumbledore, and it opened itself. A big goblet, the Goblet of Fire was revealed. Dumbledore waved on both Karkaroff and Madame Maxime and they all performed a long series of spells to turn on the Goblet. It started glowing in a beautiful blue colour.

“I will myself put up an ageline around the Goblet the second it is placed in the entrance hall. No student under seventeen will be allowed or able to enter. The possibility to enter is only tonight and tomorrow. Once you have entered there is no way back, if you are the chosen champion you can not back out. Keep that in mind”. Dumbledore finished his speech and Viktor sighed deeply. 

“I haff never heard something about quidditch here being… ehh… turned off?” Victor said, but stopping at the end of sentence to think before trying to explain what he was actually meaning. 

“You mean being cancelled for the year?” Hermione asks as kindly as possible, careful not to sound rude or like she knew more than him.

“Yes, yes, cancelled for the year. I brought my broom to train, but that is not really important. Vot is important, is that vere are your younger classes? Dumbledore said we join year seven, that is like your year? Vere are your tenth, ninth and eight year students?

Harry was confused, so he looked over at Hermione, who seemed just as confused as him. “What do you mean? We only have year one through seven”. She asked, with an uncertainty in her voice, that Harry hadn’t heard from Hermione before. 

“You don’t haff younger students than this?” Viktor halfheartedly pointed to one of the first year students that sat a few seats away from them. “How old vere you ven you started Hogwarts?”

“Eleven”. It was the first thing Ron said to Viktor, but he said it normally, like he had understood that Viktor Krum also was a human, and that fangirling over him would not make anything better. 

“Eleven!” Viktor looked completely baffled. “I vas eight. Eight years old when I started at Durmstrang, and before that I vas two years at a school closer to home, in… ehh… Bulgaria. My mother also taught me magic and the history of magic since I vas three. 

“How many years do you go at Durmstrang?” Hermione asked, with the same look in her eyes that she usually had when she learned something new. 

“Ve haff ten years. The start of the year is August 20th, and ve go on summer holidays 10th June.”

“Isn’t it hard to leave your family for so long when you are so young?”

“No, Herm-own-ninny, most of us have siblings or friends there. Most haff three or four children. I haff three siblings. Teodora, Yosif and Matea. Many of my friends haff more siblings than me. Five, six, some seven. Usually haff three”.

“But the oldest sibling?”

“Friends, and first 3 weeks parents use… ehh… Flying powder… I think… To get there, and visit daily. Then one more month a few days a veek. Slowly stopping the visits”. 

“What about the muggleborns? Their parents can’t use the floo, nor can they apparate”. 

“Don’t think you vill like this, but muggleborns are taught in different buildings, so I don’t know, and I haff never asked. Karkaroff doesn’t vant… thoroughbred ehh… unclean-bloods and the ehh… mud-born blended in the same buildings”. 

Hermione’s eyes widened as Viktor tried to explain using the words he most likely grew up with translated to English, which made it sound horrible. For once Harry was very glad that it wasn’t them at Durmstrang or Beauxbatons. 

“I don’t… I really hope you mean pureblood, halfbloods and muggleborns”. She mumbled a little quieter than she should have. 

“Yes, I do, I did not know the real names for it in English”. Viktor said with a smile, and Harry could see Hermione’s shoulders lower themselves as she breathed out.

“And you are…” Ron asked quietly, but Viktor caught it. 

“I’m a… Vot did you call it?... A pureblood”. 

Hermione seemingly didn’t care, because now there was a heat in her eyes and she wanted to do one thing, and that was get to know more about the dividing of the students at Durmstrang. 

“How are you students divided? Is it so that a muggleborn is forbidden from walking into the purebloods, or is it just that the lessons are divided? 

“Ve haff the first three years completely separated. So ve sleep in different rooms, and haff different lessons. Then then ve turn eleven they stop parting us as much, only vith lessons. Ve start sharing bedrooms. One pureblood, one halfblood and one muggleborn. It is in the main foundation of the school. The founder. Isolde Durmstrang, she vanted everyone to be the same together. Blood didn’t change anything in her eyes, and that is true”. 

“Are the boys you share a room with here then?” Ron asked, at the same time as Hermione opened her mouth to ask a question. She shot Ron a very irritated look, but she then smiled lightly and waited for Viktor’s answer. 

“Yes. Over there,” Viktor pointed to a boy and a girl sitting close together, “Christian de Silva, and his wife Nicole. Christian is from Switzerland, and speaks eight languages. Halfblood”. 

“He's married! How old is he?” Harry asked, before he could stop himself. 

“He turned nineteen a few months ago, and they haff been married for nearly a year. As soon as they have graduated they will start trying for a baby”. 

Harry noticed that Ron didn’t seem to think that was something big, but both he and Hermione turned to stare at Viktor, who smiled a little at them. 

He pointed to another boy sitting at the absolute end of the table, with his long blond hair hanging down like a shield between him and the two girls he was sandwiched between. “That is Kar Ek and his triplet sisters Sunniva and Lusine. They are Swedish and muggleborn. I still have no idea how all three of them got magic, but that is my room mates”. 

“You three seem very different from each other”. Harry said out in the air, thinking out loud.

“Yes, we are. Christian spends as much time as he can studying and learning new languages, vich is easiest for him right now since there are many different languages spoken at the school. He speaks German, French, Italian and Romansh fluently, and haff done since he was ten, then I haff taught him Bulgarian, and Kar him Swedish. Then he speaks English, without much of an accent, same with Spanish since his aunt on his father’s side apparently is married to a Spanish man, and he is learning five other languages that I can’t remember right now”. Viktor smiled lightly and he looked over at Kar. “Kar is quiet. He never talks unless he knows someone, something that people think I do too. I don’t, just so you know. I’m only quiet ven there are cameras around. I don't like the publicity. Well, back to Kar. He is the kindest person I know, and he loves to swim. Unfortunately that is not very easy at Durmstrang. There are some baths for the prefects and professors, but none for the regular students. He tends to swim in the lake we haff, but it is ice cold even during the summer. He is also really good at wandless magic, but that might be easier when you are… ehh.. Muggleborn”. 

Hermione smiled lightly. “Back to what you told us before. The founder was a woman?” She was so excited that she almost bounced in her seat. 

“The founder of Durmstrang vas a woman, but I think the feast is over now, so ve can talk more about her tomorrow, if that is alright. Karkaroff vill get angry at me if I’m late back to the boat, even if I’m his favorite student”. 

“Yeah, sure”. She did not seem very happy about it. “See you tomorrow”. She smiled, as they followed Viktor out of the Great Hall, into the entrance hall, before returning to the common room. 

It was almost midnight before everyone in the boy’s dorm had fallen asleep, and Harry could sneak out under the invisibility cloak. He ran, actually ran through the corridors to the library, where he found his way into the restricted parts without problem. He started searching for books about time travel, and did not find a singular thing that matched what had happened to him. It took three hours before he gave up, and was on his way to leave the library, when a book caught his eyes. The title was Age-lines, and Harry couldn’t help himself. He had to pick it up. 

He looked through the book, and the most obvious thing was that no ageline actually stopped someone under the set age from entering. It had to do with mental age. So a teenager that thought like an adult could enter, but an adult that was too childish could not enter. 

It gave Harry an idea. His name would be shot out of the Goblet whether he wanted to or not, but he could enter other people’s name, if Barty Crouch Junior could enter Harry’s name in the Goblet. 

Harry put the book back where he found it and walked fast to the entrance hall, where there were some notes and ink placed out right inside of the ageline. Harry looked around and stepped through. No beard grew on his face, and he smiled. Then he wrote down one name on a note, and folded it in half. 

Draco Lucius Malfoy

Hogwarts

Harry pulled out his wand and started to mumble a spell, a dark spell, he had learnt as an Auror, and when he was sure that there was a fifth school entered into the Goblet he peaked down into the Goblet. There was a divider which had divided the Goblet into 5 bigger pieces, and a smaller round piece in the middle. The smaller circular piece of the goblet had three paper notes in it. Harry guessed that in that circle there were the three tasks.  

Each one of the bigger pieces lit up with the name of the school. There were three schools named Hogwarts, and Harry could see that in one of the Hogwarts there were four or five pieces of paper already, while one only had one piece of paper in it. His name. So he dropped the piece of paper with Draco’s name on it into the only empty part of the goblet. 

Right before he walked away Harry rubbed his head, since he still had a headache and a name popped up in his head. He thought back to what was said his first time entering the Tournament. If entered, you lost your magic or even your life if you didn’t compete. 

So Harry wrote one more note, and performed the spell once more, and dropped down the folded note into the empty compartment. The second he dropped it the three extra sections disappeared, and he walked away. 

The next morning Harry woke up, still in his old school bed, and sighed. Apparently it wasn’t only one day he was going to spend at Hogwarts. He smiled and woke Ron up, before dragging him down to eat breakfast. 

Hermione and Viktor discussed the founders of Hogwarts and the founder of Durmstrang. Viktor knew a lot about Isolde Durmstrang, a Swedish witch that had gotten dumped on a pair of muggles. She loved the muggles a lot, but they were unable to teach her any magic. She taught herself a lot, but she also found a few friends that had magic parents. Purebloods, who thought she was a muggleborn witch, and hated her for it. When Isolde then met her real parents, the minister of magic in Sweden, and her husband, she made everything better for the muggleborns in Sweden. There was only one thing missing, and that was a school that accepted everyone. Most of the smaller wizarding schools either didn’t accept muggleborns, or didn’t accept girls, and nothing in between. So Isolde made a school. She called it Durmstrang, even if it was her muggleparents last name, which she had kept. 

She put in the rules, and a rule that most people thought was unnecessary, but Isolde knew that having the students spend ten years together blended, muggleborn, halfblood and pureblood, would improve society. The one rule she made was that in each room there had to sleep a pureblood, a halfblood and a muggleborn, only. The school grew for each year, and right before she died it was the biggest school in all of Europe. 

Hermione had told Viktor about Hogwarts, and about the founders. He had asked questions about them that she had been unable to answer, and that had brought a light to Harry, Ron and Hermione that they almost didn’t know anything about the founders of their own school. They knew their names, and that was about it. They had no idea who their founders were, or why they even started the school. How they got to know each other, or how old they were when they made the school, or when they met. 

They knew nothing about their founders, and Viktor's knowledge of Isolde Durmstrang made that very noticeable. 

Viktor and Harry got together with a few quidditch players from the different teams and they played a match. Harry got the snitch, which he was really, really proud of. Harry and Viktor stayed on the pitch, as Viktor wanted to teach Harry some new things, and Harry obviously wasn’t going to say no. 

They played quidditch for hours, showing each other tricks and when Hermione and Ron appeared again they looked stressed. 

“Harry James Potter! Do you have any idea of what the time is right now!”Hermione screamed, angry, but mostly stressed. 

“No…” He answered with a shrug.

“It’s five o’clock. The feast starts in five minutes! And I think Viktor wants to be there.” She backfired, still screaming. 

Harry swallowed and turned his broom against the ground, going down as fast as he could, stopping right in front of Hermione and Ron, who started walking back into the castle, seconds after Viktor had landed. 

They all sat down at the Gryffindor table, right in time as the food was served. Harry had not noticed how hungry he had been after they had played quidditch, and then been flying for hours and hours, missing lunch and almost dinner, so he ate faster, and more than he should have. 

After a very long one and a half hours Dumbledore stepped toward the podium where the Goblet of Fire once again had been placed. 

Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore:

Albus smiled big as he looked out over the students. Three champions would be chosen to compete. One Hogwarts student, one Beauxbatons student, and one Durmstrang student. The three of them would compete in deadly tasks that already had been entered into the Goblet. Three tasks that could kill someone that didn’t have enough experience with magic.

He cleared his throat and caught the attention of all the students and professors. They looked straight at him, and the international students' very distinct colours of clothing stood out from where they were sitting.

“Welcome. Now that everyone has filled their stomachs and maybe gotten some new friends, it is time for the Goblet of Fire to choose the three most suitable wizards or witches to compete in the Triwizard Tournament”. The Goblet lit up in red spitting out a paper. 

Albus picked it up and read the name out loud. “The Durmstrang Champion is… Viktor Krum!” The Great Hall exploded in applause and Mr. Krum stood up and smiled, as Albus pointed him to a little room a few meters away. 

The Goblet lit up again and I picked up the paper when it was still in the air. “The Beauxbatons Champion is… Fleur Delacour!” There was almost the same amount of applause this time, but it was possible to hear crying too. Some of the Beauxbatons students had broken down, crying, possibly since they didn’t get to be the Champion. 

He once more took the note that the Goblet spit out, the final note. The Hogwarts Champion. “The Hogwarts Champion is… Cedric Diggory!” The Hufflepuff table broke out in violent applause, as did the Gryffindor and Ravenclaw tables. The international students applauded politely, and the Slytherin students did not do anything more than sit and look angry. 

“That was the Triwizard Tournaments Champions. Durmstrang will be represented by Viktor Krum, Beauxbatons will be represented by Fleur Delacour and Hogwarts will be represented by Cedric Diggary!” The hall once again burst out in violent applause and Albus looked over at the Goblet expecting it to have stopped glowing. It had not. It flamed up once again, and out came another note. He slowly reached out and picked it up from where it had fallen down on the podium. 

As he unfolded it he could hear Olympe. “Dumbly-dorr, zat is ze meaning of zis?! Zere are only three champions in ze Triwizard Tournament!” She sounded angry, and all Albus could do was unfold the note as he answered her. 

“Unfortunately I have no idea what is going on, but the Goblet apparently has decided to choose another Champion”. He clarified for himself, Olympe and the students at the same time. 

“The fourth Champion is… Harry Potter.” It is always Harry Potter. Always. It was him who defeated Voldemort on Quirrell’s head his first year, him who killed the basilisk and got Ginny out of the chamber his second year, and him who saved Sirius Black from the dementors his third year by using a corporeal patronus, and almost getting killed by a werewolf. 

That is why Albus wasn’t very shocked that it was Harry James Potter’s name written on the note that the Goblet spit out his name. 

Olympe and Igor walked down to him as he pointed to the room that the other three Champions were in for Harry to walk in. Olympe turned to him, only to look bigeyes at the Goblet. Albus had time enough to turn toward it to see it light up and spit out another note that Olympe caught before it had time to land on the podium. She opened it and looked at the note for a few seconds. “Draco Malfoy!”

Albus looked over at the Malfoy boy, and he looked scared for a few seconds. He was completely unknowing about his name being entered, that was easy to see. He slowly walked up to the podium where Albus stood. He looked first at Albus for a few seconds and then at the note. Back and forth a few times before he strode over to the room and ripped the door open and slammed it behind himself. 

“Haha, another one, Dumbledore. How many students from Hogwarts do you want? You already have three, you don’t need anymore. We will still win with Viktor”. Albus turned to see Igor holding a note that most likely just flew out of the Goblet. “Let’s see who’s on this note. Can Mr. Tom Marvolo Riddle, come toward please?!”

Albus ripped the note out of Karkaroff’s hand and he stared at it for maybe a minute, before he was sure that it actually was Tom’s name that had gotten out of the Goblet. A name he had not seen written out in years, not more than in Tom’s diary that Lucius Malfoy gave to Ginny Weasley two years ago. It was a name lost in time, especially when it was Karkaroff, a well known Death Eater that read the name, and didn’t know who Tom was. 

“Well come on, Tom, you entered yourself”. Karkaroff mocked in a cold tone, and Albus put a hand on his shoulder. 

“Tom won’t come, he’s been dead for a little over thirteen years”. Albus’ voice was quiet, and cold, but it was loud enough for the professors and the students closest to hear him. 

“Dead…” Karkaroff’s voice shook ever so lightly as he took a step aside.

Albus quickly looked at the Goblet, which finally had stopped burning, as he started walking toward the room where they had sent off five of the six Champions. Five teenagers that were going to compete against each other. Five teens where two of them were under the age limit by over three years. Five teenagers that maybe would have to compete with Lord Voldemort, over a stupid prize of one thousand Galleons and the Triwizard pokal. Something neither of them would be able to touch if Lord Voldemort actually had to compete…

Chapter Text

Draco Lucius Malfoy: 

“Draco Malfoy!” Dumbledore sounded angry, and surprised, in a mix that Draco did not like. 

He could feel his heart pounding in his chest, and he looked over at Theodore for a few seconds. Their eyes met, and they shared a look. They both knew that Draco had not entered his name himself in the Goblet, he had been studying the whole night with Theodore, and the rest of their friends. 

Go. Dumbledore won’t be happy about it, but didn’t you say you wanted to compete yesterday, now you will be able to do exactly that. So go”. Theodore said quietly, but kindly, and Draco stood up, and had to control every muscle in his body not to fall back against the table. He slowly walked against the podium, showing that he was powerful, and not scared at all. That he didn’t care, but on the inside his heart was pounding. He felt empty and at the same time heavy, like he was filled with stone. 

At the podium he stopped right in front of the Headmaster and smiled ever so slightly, before he let his eyes slide over to the note Dumbledore held in his hand. Draco looked at his own name, written in a handwriting that wasn’t his, staring back at him, and then back at Dumbledore. He did that a few times, before he sighed and strode over to the room where the four other Champions had been pointed. 

He ripped open the door with a little more power than he should have, and to make it seem like he meant it, he slammed the door behind him. He was irritated and didn’t notice the shouting until half a minute after he walked in. 

Diggary was standing leaned against one of the walls, the older boy had a look on his face that said something along the lines of him not even being shocked since it was Potter. His muscles were tense, and he didn’t seem happy about being able to represent the school in the Tournament. His gray eyes met Draco’s, and he nodded at Diggory.

Krum mostly seemed worried about the fact that Potter was in the Tournament, and not that he had to compete against him, and Delacour was screaming at Potter in broken English. She broke into French sometimes and even if Draco understood her, it was obvious that Potter didn’t. 

Draco stayed by the door until someone but Diggory noticed him, and it obviously was Potter. 

“Malfoy”. He sounded both like he knew very much more than Draco, and that he wanted to understand why he was there. 

“Yes, Potter”. Draco answered in the same tone as he usually did. “I’m also chosen, so miss, you can move over so that I can sit. Apparently the Goblet has gone crazy, and started spitting out random names, and it somehow knew that Potter over there, seems to like to be part of everything”. Draco kept talking about Harry outshining people, and everything like that, both to comfort himself with the knowledge that Potter wasn’t as special this time, and to tell the other Champions about it. To warn them about it.

Draco sat down besides Delacour, who gave him an offended look, and he knew that she just judged everything he had. She was stunningly beautiful, had veelablood in her veins, but Draco had realised only hours after she arrived, that she did not have the same kind of allure on him that she did the other boys. He had played it away as him being a Malfoy, but he knew that it was because of a different reason. 

“C'est dingue, deux petits garçons qui participent au tournoi. Je ne sais pas du tout comment mes parents vont le prendre, moi qui vais les affronter, et peut-être même leur faire mal…” Delacour whispered to herself, as she was staring at the floor in a way that made it visible that she was nervous. 

She was worried about hurting him and Potter, which Draco thought was pretty sweet. She was not angry about them being in the Tournament. She was afraid that she would hurt them, or that someone else would.

“Okay, I think we have to talk, all five of us”. Diggory said with a shrug. “The Goblet obviously has gone crazy, letting both Harry and Malfoy… Draco, enter. This changes everything for all of us”. He continued losing the tiny smile he had on his face. “This will be hard for us, who are over seventeen. Harry and Ma… Draco, you might get seriously hurt. There is a chance that one of you will be sent into Sankt Mungos and stay there for months. That chance is there for us too, but not as big. We have more power than you, and we know more spells. I would say that we could tutor you until the last task, since that will be the most dangerous one, but I also know that I’m talking about Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy”.

Draco smirked as he looked over at Harry, who had stuck his hands in his robepockets. 

“Nervous Potter?”

“Yes, I am Malfoy, but so should you be”.

“Why?”

“Guess?! We are in a lethal Tournament that has killed hundreds, and we are competing against three seventeen year old wizards and witches. So I have all the right to be nervous. Viktor knows more dark magic than me, you and Cedric combined. Fleur is better at charmwork than either of us will ever be, since that is Beauxbatons’ specialty. Cedric is good at defensive spells, really good at it even, so we have some competition that will be hard to break through, even if they teach us everything they know”. 

Draco sighed as Potter, showing that he didn’t care, but inside he was panicking since what Potter was saying was completely true. He turned his attention back to Diggary, still with a pounding heart, who once again started talking. 

“Krum, Delacour, I will refer to you as Viktor and Fleur now. That is easier, and more personal, and we are all stuck in this together”. That earned a nod from Krum and a fast “oui” from Fleur. “Then we are back to square one. We have two fourteen year olds competing with us, and against us at the same time. I will be shocked if Harry doesn’t win in some way in the end, because he somehow always manages to do something crazy at the end of the school year, but right now I’m going to ignore that detail. So we have to tutor them. I will teach them some of the more advanced defence spells, and then I would want you to see if you could find something you can teach them too. We can make a layout tomorrow, because they will need guidance through this.” Diggory grew quiet and so did the room. Completely quiet, in a very uncomfortable silence. 

“Sure, ve can help Harry and… ehh… Draco. Miss?” Krum started and looked over at Delacour. She smiled at him, but did nothing else. 

Harry was moving his weight from foot to foot, and it was easy to see then he was nervous. Really nervous for what Delacour was going to say.

“Okay, we can ‘elp zem. ‘Arry, Draco, we will ‘elp you through ze Tournament. Cedric, you can choose a place for us to meet” Delacour said, with a smile that very easily was detectable as a false one. “And ze time”. She added after a few seconds. 

“Of course Fleur. We will meet at the entrance to the Forbidden Forest at three o’clock tomorrow. Harry, Draco, does that work for you?”

“That’s fine for me”. Potter answered in a monotone voice. He kept shooting glances at the door, and then checking the time. It was like he was nervous someone would burst in and kill them all any second. 

Draco nodded to show his agreement, and then right after Diggory started speaking with Krum, Dumbledore, Karkaroff and Madame Maxime burst in, looking worried. They looked over the five of them, and they realised that nothing had happened to them, they seemed very relieved. Draco did not understand why everyone was acting so weird. 

Draco slipped one hand into his robepocket and found the note. The note that had somehow known more about him than he had. 

The paper was soft, and easily bendable, so he started bending it and playing with it to distract himself from the thought that the headmistress of Beauxbatons was shouting at Harry, in French, and that she would most likely do the same to him in a few minutes. 

She walked over to Draco after about two minutes, and she looked him in his eyes, even if that meant Draco had to look up at her, and she started shouting. She screamed about it being rude of him to enter his name, and that Hogwarts should not be allowed three champions. She kept shouting until she had gone through every single one of the reasons it was rude for Hogwarts to have three Champions. 

Draco sighed and in perfect French answered her that “yes, it might have been purely rude of Hogwarts to have three Champions, but also that both him and Potter didn’t put their names in the Goblet, but it was since the Goblet that had gone crazy” and Fleur gasped. Madame Maxime had just looked at him for a few seconds before Severus had walked in. That made the room grow quiet, and he gestured for them to continue. It was just the normal stuff after that. Draco listened closely to the description of the task and what was going to happen, and what was legal. Not very much. After that Dumbledore, Karkaroff and Madame Maxime started arguing again and Severus managed to save him from their yelling, by saying that he had to get back to his dorm now. Or something like that, with a little bit more focus on his age, which meant Severus saved both him and Potter from the room, and Draco could see the relief in Potter’s face. 

They had just gotten to know a few details about the first task, and the most important part was that it was twenty-fourth November and it was to test their daring and courage. 

Draco was nervous about it, very nervous, because he was in Slytherin for a reason. He was brave, sure he was, but not like a Gryffindor, not like Potter. Potter could do everything without thinking about it more than once, Draco had to think through everything four or five times before he did it. 

Draco’s bed is not as comfortable as it was in the morning. It felt weird being back in his dorm, but it might also have to do with the fact that he was the center of attention at that moment. The four other boys in his dorm, Theodore, Blaise, Gregory and Vincent, all were staring at him, waiting for him to tell them exactly what happened in the room. 

Draco glanced over at Theodore, who smiled at him, and he smiled back, and then told the four boys everything. He told them about the task, about what the other Champions were like, and how the Professors had reacted. Blaise asked about Potter, and Draco had answered that Potter seemed to be just as shocked and surprised about everything that happened as Draco was. 

Draco continued to answer the stupidest of questions that Vincent and Gregery kept asking, but the only thing he actually was able to think about was that there was quite a bit of possibility for him to die in the Tournament. There was a reason why Dumbledore had put up the age line. It was so that students under seventeen would understand that the Tournament was deadly. That hundreds of people had died in it, and many more had been fatally wounded.

Draco noticed that Theodore wanted to say something, and then he gave Theodore the chance, he blurted out that there had been another champion spit out of the Goblet. A boy named Tom Riddle, who Dumbledore said had been dead for soon fourteen years. That scared Draco very much. There was someone that was going to compete in the Tournament that had been dead for over thirteen years. That someone was going to have to compete, because it had been pulled out of the Goblet, after what his father had told him about it. The Goblet was one of the most ancient and dangerous things in modern wizard history. 

After an hour and a half Gregory and Vincent gave up asking Draco questions that he didn’t want to answer, and walked out of the dorm. Blaise followed them with a book under his arm. It was only Draco and Theodore left in the dorm, and none of them knew what to do. 

“So nervous about our OWLs next year?” Theodore asked quietly, while playing with a quill in his hand. 

“Quite. If I fail them my parents won’t be happy since I have to take over after my father”.

“Like you of all people would fail your OWLs. That is impossible. You have the best grades of all the Slytherins.” Theodore laughed with a careless smile. 

“Granger has better grades than me. Somehow a Mudblood has better grades than me!” Draco mumbles, irritated and his hands tremble ever so slightly at the thought of Granger being better at magic than him. 

“She doesn’t count! She won’t get anywhere in this world.” Theodore exclaimed, even if both of them knew that it wasn’t true. They had both heard Severus mumble about the Brightest Witch of this Age, and it was easy to understand it was Granger he was talking about. Severus didn’t like Granger, he might even hate her, but he couldn’t not see that Granger was one of the smartest people he had ever met. She would get a long way in the Wizarding World. 

“You know just as well as me, that that’s not true. How do you think your OWLs will go, Theodore?” Draco asked in a half mocking tone. 

“Draco! Don’t call me Theodore. You know I hate it. It sounds so formal. Call me Theo.”

“Does Theodora work?” Draco laughed. 

“No, stupid, it does not, but I think my OWLs will go fine”. Theodore answered Draco’s actual question, changing the subject back to what it was before. “I have over one and a half years left to study for them, and unless something really crazy happens in the next year and a half I think I will be fine.” 

“What do you think you will do when you become an adult?” Draco asked, asking something he always had wanted to ask. 

“Want to or have to?”

“You know what I mean”. 

“I have to take over after my father, corrupting the world more, and I have actually never thought about what I would want to be if I didn’t have to take over as Lord Nott after my father. And you, do you have any dream job you would want to work at?”

“I have the same problem. I am Lord Malfoy, the second my father dies, but if I had the choice of actually choosing what I would want to work as I would become a professional Quidditch player. That is something I always dreamt about, especially when I was little”. 

Theodore placed an arm around Draco’s shoulder and Draco felt how his stomach filled with butterflies. He knew it was stupid, because boys didn’t like boys. That was basically forbidden. Illegal. Everyone knew that. Especially Draco, he had heard it since he was only a few years old, and wanted to try on his mother’s clothes. That was the first time he felt the Cruciatus curse, but absolutely not the last. He had cried for hours afterward, but he also knew that it was stupid to try on girl clothes. He was a boy, and as one he had to marry a woman, fall in love with one, and make an heir. 

“Draco, it’s getting late, we should go to sleep”. Theodore whispers into Draco’s ear, sending electric waves through Draco’s whole body.

Draco quickly nodded, and they got ready for bed. As Theodore changed into his pyjamas Draco couldn't help but look over, seeing Theodore’s slim figure, and muscular back. 

Draco quickly turned his head back and changed into his own pyjamas, before saying goodnight to Theodore and getting in under the sheets. 

Draco sat up staring at the ceiling for a few minutes, trying to calm his breathing. The nightmare he had was horrible, he dreamt about himself dying in the tournament. There had been blood everywhere, and he had seen his family cry over his dead body, as he tried to tell them that he was still alive. It had been so realistic that Draco thought it was real long after he had woken up.

He was still panting, but during that second he decided that telling his parents that he was competing might help him somewhat. His father might even be able to get him out of it. Out of the Tournament, and make him safe again.  

Draco wrote the letter and he was very happy about how it turned out. Then he sent it away with his owl, Noire, and sat down on his bed, staring at his hands, which had been stained with ink. 

“Draco? It’s the middle of the night, what is it?” Theodore asked quietly, and Draco couldn’t help but smile at him.

“I… I had a nightmare, it’s nothing.”. 

“It’s something if you are awake, and shivering”. Theodore mumbled as he sat up. “Want to talk about it?”

Draco shook his head, and Theodore pats the bed next to him, with a faint smile. “Well, you are sleeping in my bed for the rest of the night. Come here”.

Draco smirked ever so slightly and sat down on Theodore’s bed next to Theodore. Then he got pushed into the pillows, and started laughing at the absurdity of the situation. Everything had been crazy that day, but Draco had never fathomed being able to sleep in the same bed at Theodore. 

“We have to sleep now, our lessons start like usual tomorrow, and it is already two in the morning”. Theodore mumbled in Draco’s ear, and laid down beside him. 

Draco felt Theodore’s arms around himself shortly after Theodore had fallen asleep, and his heart started pounding. The wrong kind of pounding, it hurt, like there was something sharp, like metal in his heart, and for each beat it broke him even more. He bit his lip over and over, and after what felt like hours he finally managed to fall asleep, but that was only after Theodore had moved even closer, and was laying pressed against him. 

In some weird way Draco felt both the safest he had been in months, and the most scared he had been in months. And the blend was uncomfortable. Both made his heart pound, and made him both tense and relaxed at the same time. It was a weird feeling, but Draco managed to fall asleep. 

Lord Voldemort:

The house was the exact same amount of disgusting as it had been when he had visited it when he was young, to kill his father, and cover up the tracks of him being a halfblood. 

Voldemort hated the place, but he also knew that it was the last place anyone would search for him. It was the place he had told Pettigrew to take him to, even if he hated the place. 

He heard someone apparate outside of the house and he reacted by screaming at Pettigrew to cover him up. Only a few seconds later a young man walked in. Barty Crouch Junior. One of his most faithful followers. 

“Barty”. He hissed, in his usual manner. 

The young man jumped ever so lightly and bowed deeply in front of Voldemort. At the same time Voldemort noted that Pettigrew had made his way out of the room. 

“Do you have a rapport for me?”

“Yes, my Lord, I do. I entered Potter into the Goblet like you told me to. He is one of the Champions now, but there is one more problem. There were two other people too. Draco Malfoy is the fifth Champion, and I promise you my Lord, I did not put his name in the Goblet”, Barty said, his tongue playing in and out of his mouth. 

“And who was the last one”, Voldemort said without showing any of the shock he felt about the Malfoy boy being in the Tournament. 

“I don’t know who he is, but Dumbledore said he had been dead for a little more than thirteen years.”

“The name!”Voldemort shouted, having lost his temper with Barty. 

“Yes, my Lord. His name was Tom Riddle…” 

Voldemort took one shaky breath and then he went back to staring with bloodred eyes at Barty. An uncomfortable silence had formed in between them, and Voldemort could see on Barty’s face that he was scared. 

“Crucio”. Voldemort said with a bored tone, and Barty fell to the ground screaming in pain.

Voldemort looked bored as he tortured Barty, but he was panicking inside. His old name was pulled from the Goblet, and from what he knew there were only a few chosen people that knew that name, and Dumbledore, he also knew. It was either someone new that had gotten to know about his old name somehow or it was Dumbledore who had put his old name in the Goblet. 

Voldemort ended his Cruciatus curse on Barty, and sent the shaking young man away after telling him that a single word about anything suspicious could get him killed at Hogwarts. 

About two hours later Voldemort started to worry about if he actually would have to compete in the Tournament. He, like everyone else that had spent a lot of time in the Hogwarts Library, knew that the Goblet of Fire was an old artefact. One that was so dangerous it could pull magic from a person, and even kill them. That scared Voldemort. That actually scared him, but Barty said that the first task was not until late November, so he had time to think it through. And even if the time was ticking and nothing was going in the direction that he wanted it too. It had not been going in the right direction in over fourteen years. 

He almost called on Pettigrew when a pain worse than splitting his soul hit what was left of his body and he slowly fell out of the chair, hissing, as if he had forgotten that he ever spoke English. He hissed, and hissed, but Pettigrew didn’t seem to hear him. 

He laid on the floor, trying to signal that he was in pain, until he started seizing and lost the ability to communicate. He kept shaking for eleven minutes and forty-seven seconds, before he managed to raise his hands up to his face. They were disappearing, and so was his whole body. Everything went black as a cloud of black smoke came from the armchair where Voldemort had been sitting. That was the last anyone ever saw of the Dark Lord Voldemort. 

Harry James Potter:

The inside of Harry’s eyes lit up with a sudden light. It was only there for a second, and then it disappeared, but pain as painful as getting hit with the Killing Curse spread through Harry’s head. 

He almost screamed, but decided in a split second to keep quiet since he didn’t want to wake anyone up. Harry slowly got out of bed, his feet hitting the cold floor sending shivers throughout his body. He shivered and shivered, like there was something missing, and he looked out of the window, seeing his reflection in it. He was bleeding profusely from the scar. Harry had not noticed it since the pain had been so intense, but it was subsiding, and becoming a dull throbbing pain, one that was like one of the lighter Horcrux-headaches. 

He was really confused. Nothing like this had happened in his last life. He had never started bleeding from the scar, and he had only felt that kind of pain once. That was when Voldemort hit him with the Killing Curse the second time. When Voldemort’s soulpiece was pulled from his forehead. 

Harry slowly started piecing things together, and he realised that that must have been exactly what happened. Something must have pulled Voldemort’s soulpiece out of his head. 

“Is there a possibility he returns even earlier this time?” Harry whispered to himself, still staring out the window. 

The Durmstrang ship still had some windows lit up, even if it was getting closer to three in the morning. Harry was not really able to see the ship, but he could guess himself to a shape standing on the deck. Someone who looked out over the lake. 

Harry waited until the shape had disappeared, and went into the bathroom to wipe the blood off his forehead.

He sat down on his bed trying to figure out how he was going to fall asleep again. Not that he had to think for long, because his exhaustion made him fall asleep faster than he actually wanted. 

He:

The young boy stared down at a pair of hands, a pair of hands that seconds ago had been clutching a note. The note had he himself written, and it only had one name on it. A name that he from then on was going to refer to himself as. 

He looked up when he heard a sound that he had never heard before. It sounded like a wind through trees, blended with a scream. Shuddering he took a few steps toward, trying to figure out what was going on. 

He had just been sitting on his bed in the Slytherin dorm, and now he was standing in a completely white space, with something happening over and over around him even if he couldn’t see it. 

After looking around for minutes on end, trying to figure out how long it would take before he stopped dreaming, he could see how the white wall in front of him started getting pulled back. It was like the wall was soft, like halfdried paint, and someone pulled on it. It slowly started cracking, and it started swirling. He stepped back, trying not to get too close, since the wall-swirl was sucking him against it with a strength that scared him. 

He backed until he walked straight into something. Looking around he couldn't see anything but he noticed quickly that there was no way of him getting through the wall on the other side, and the wall-swirl was spinning faster and faster for each second that passed. It sucked him against itself, and the edges of the swirl were starting to get blurry. 

He screamed as it managed to suck him in, since he didn’t have anything to hold on to. Expecting to wake up he opened his eyes, and the first thing he saw was a forest. A dark black forest, and then he noticed the sky, it was a deep pinkish purple, but there were still stars shining. 

He stood up, having to hold on to a tree to get his legs to stop shaking. His body aching like it had been put together piece by piece again and every time a gush of wind hit him he wanted to fall to the ground.

He kept looking around trying to find a way out of the forest. He did not find anything at all. Not a single gap in between the trees, nothing. It was darker than the deepest of nights.

The forest just got deeper as he walked, he felt like he had walked forever, but when the sun slowly rose over the trees, he sat down on the ground. He shoved his hands into the ground, the soft moss closing gently around his fingers. Listening to the sounds of the forest he heard hooves hitting the ground, and gigantic fangs slamming together. 

It didn’t take long before he noticed that the ground was filled with small spiders going in a straight line deeper into the forest. He had seen that in a book. It talked about Aromantulas, and how the small spiders were pulled against the big ones. 

He stood up slowly, wanting to get away from the spiders as fast as possible, since there were bigger spiders much closer than he would have liked, since he could hear their fangs slamming together. 

He ran until his ragged breaths didn’t reach his lungs anymore, and he had to stop. He stood leaned against a tree for over an hour, trying to regain what strength he had before he ran. He did not have the energy to stay standing after that, so he sank down on the ground under the tree. The low branches offered him shelter from the rain that had started falling, but his clothes were already sticking to his body, making him colder and colder for each minute that passed. 

He looked down on himself and his shirt was covered in blood. He unbuttoned it, and saw a wound he had not even realised he had gotten. It was not deep, but it was bleeding a lot. He searched from his wand to stop the bleeding, but realised that it still was laying on his bedside table. His hand trembled as he went back to the muggle methods that he was raised with. There had been a lot of wounded people in the war, and when he was a little younger he had been taught, even though reluctantly, to bandage and take care of wounded people. 

That was after the first bombings of London, that hurt him more than he expected. It managed to miss the orphanage every time, but every time he was just as scared. The first bombing of London was in September, exactly on the seventh of September, and he had been out on the street, right outside of the orphanage, trying to use wandless magic for the first time. The bomb had landed about ninety meters from him, and it had shattered all of the orphanage's windows, but he had somehow not gotten hurt at all, and neither had the orphanage. He had walked out of the splinters of laying houses and laughed. Then someone had pulled him with them, and had him help the wounded. He had been thirteen years old, and when he last saw the orphanage, it had been the same situation in the whole of London. 

Dead people laid on the streets for days after the bombings, and no one wanted to clean up, since there was a chance they themselves got bombed. He had thought that was crazy since there were bodies rotting on the ground, since they sometimes laid there for weeks, especially when there were only parts of the people left. 

He ripped a part of his shirt and bandaged the wound on his chest, only looking quickly at the scars leaping all over his body. Scars he had not shown anyone. Scars that were hidden away from everyone. Scars that he had not yet accepted how he got them. 

“I want to get out of here!” He cried to himself, and his shoulders started shaking as he burst out crying for the first time in years.

There was so much upon his shoulders that he didn’t know how to handle it, and then he got stuck in the forest, still having no idea on how he got there. That scared him. He had not felt this helpless in years, the last time he felt like this he had not yet started Hogwarts, and the rest of the children at the orphanage didn’t want to be close to him. 

His hands shook, as he wiped the tears from his cheek over and over, trying to figure out what he was supposed to do. It was early morning, but he was completely exhausted, and he had not heard any weird noises in a while. He didn’t know if he was supposed to try and sleep, or continue walking to see if he could get somewhere that wasn’t the forest. 

He curls together under the tree to get some warmth, breathing as quietly as he could. After only a few minutes his exhaustion made the choice for him, and he fell asleep. 

The next time he gained consciousness it was light outside. The sun was in the middle of the sky, so he guessed at what time it should be. It should be around noon, so he had only slept a few hours. 

He stood up, still on shaking legs, and he wanted to give up. So lay down and stay there until someone found him, even if he knew that if he did that no one would find him, not alive at least. 

He walked slowly, over the course of a few hours, only meeting a thestral once, and it had let him pet it. It had been scary, but he had petted it, and it had let him up on its back. He had ridden on it for almost an hour and a half, when it abruptly stopped, and he could hear sounds of other humans. 

He thanked the thestral by bowing deeply and petting it some more, before he kept walking against the sound of people. It still took him almost an hour before he reached the outskirts of the forest, and saw something he didn’t expect. He saw Hogwarts. That made him realise where he had just spent over twelve hours. In the Forbidden Forest. 

He could have gotten killed any second there, but he survived, with only a wound he inflicted on himself, and a few scratches from branches and such. He sat down next to a tree, exhausted but happy that he had found his way back to Hogwarts. The thing was that he did not know who any of the faces that walked close by was. None of them realised he was there, and neither did he want them too, since he didn’t know how they were. He did not see a single face that he had seen even once before. 

There was a big light blue carriage standing by a house that he had never seen before. He was able to see the lake too, and in the lake there was a gigantic ship. There were a lot of people going in and out of both the ship and the carriage. 

He was confused, since that had not been there when he walked inside after his last lesson of the day, that had been herbology. 

“Hi”. A voice behind him said, and he turned around faster than he thought was humanly possible. 

Behind him stood a ghost. A girl. She didn’t look older than fourteen, and she was wearing a school uniform, with a ravenclaw tie. She smiled at him, and smiled back. 

“Hi, what are you doing here?”

“I’m tired of haunting the bathroom, and the lake is boring with the ship, since it scares away the fish and the creatures. The more important question is, why are you here?” She said, as she crossed her arms, trying to look older. Not that it worked, it only made her look cute, and a lot younger. She uncrossed them and sighed. “Why would you answer me? I’m just a crazy bathroom ghost”. 

“I… I was going to answer you, I was just admiring your courage. I would not have walked up to a stranger the way you just did”. He said as fast as possible, and since it was half true she took it as the truth. 

“You think I have courage? I only walked up to you since I knew that you couldn’t kill me. Now tell me about why you are here, since that is not the correct school uniform anymore”. She smirked, with a bluntness that was only possible to have when you knew that no one could do something about it. 

“I don’t know how I got here. I’ve been in the forest for over twelve hours, I think, and I can’t recognise anyone. 

“What time are you from?” 

“What?”

“You have the same uniform as me, and that one was changed only a few months after I died, so what time are you from, since anyone could realise that you are not from now”. 

“Last time I checked a calendar it was the thirty-first of October nineteen forty-one”.

“You are since before I died. That’s a first. We must have gone to Hogwarts together, even if you seem to be older than me. How old are you?”

“I’m fourteen, but I turn fifteen in December. How old are you?

“I was born in nineteen twenty-nine, and I died when I was fourteen, at the end of my school year, but do math and I am sixtyfive, but I feel like I am fourteen, so that is what I tend to say. 

“I’m sorry, but what is your name?” He asked after it got really quiet for a few minutes. 

She grinned so big that it looked scary. “I’m Myrtle. Myrtle Elizabeth Warren, and I have to go now. I have to go back to haunting the bathrooms, since that is my role in this school”. 

She ended the conversion very quickly and he watched as she flew away. He somehow had gotten fond of a girl that he didn’t even know. He only knew that she had a traumatic past, and that was enough for him to get fond of her. Not that he would ever fall in love with a ghost, but he felt like he understood her more than she might have thought he did. 

He crossed his legs and laid down on the ground, looking straight up at the sky, that was completely clear. It was warmer than it had been at this time in his own time, because from Myrtle’s reaction he was in the future. Maybe he had made a bad choice in name. Maybe he should not have chosen a new name for himself.

He should not have made a new name, a french one, since he was allowed to follow Abraxas to France, and had realised that most english speaking people would not understand a word of what he was saying, but they would know the name he had chosen for himself, and not the name his mother had given him. Not that it was a bad name, it was just hard to have people not think he was muggleborn directly when they heard his name. It had been hard to try and get people to understand that he was a halfblood, and not a muggleborn. It had taken him two years to earn the trust from his friends in Slytherin, all because of his first name.

He decided in that second that he didn’t care how bad his name might be, but he was going to keep it. He was going to be Tom Riddle, and never Voldemort. Never. Tom Marvolo Riddle, and the biggest change in his name he could do was change his given name to Marvolo, even if it had a bad reputation in the rest of the houses. 

Lucius Abraxas Malfoy:

Lucius took the letter from the plate that the house-elf held up for him. The neat writing that looked so much like Narcissa’s told him that it was Draco who had written him a letter, surely to tell him everything about the three Triwizard Champions. 

Lucius opened the letter and smiled at the writing before he started to read. 

Dear Father, 

Today has been crazy. Let me first tell you about how Dumbledore started the whole tournament. He welcomed the other students, from the other schools. Viktor Krum is still a student at Durmstrang! Would I have been anyone else, I would have asked for his autograph, but he sat down next to Potter, so I am no longer interested in even thinking that again. 

The Hogwarts Champion is Cedric Diggory, a Hufflepuff, which is unfortunate. The Beauxbatons Champion is Fleur Delacour, and the Durmstrang Champion Viktor Krum. 

Then here comes the crazy part. The Goblet went crazy and spit out three more names. Potter, like usual, gets to be a main character, a name I’ve never heard before, and my name. 

Father, I am one of the Champions. I will have to compete in the Tournament, and if there is one thing I don’t want it is that. If there is any possibility for you to get me out of the Tournament legally, without killing me or taking my magic away, I would be forever grateful. 

I am good at magic, but not good enough to survive in the Tournament. It would be fun, but that is not overshadowing how scared I am. I would have to fight a Durmstrang Wizard, and they are well known for using dark magic against people. 

Now I have ranted about that enough, and I am just going to tell you about the name that also came out of the Goblet. It was Tom Riddle. Dumbledore says he has been dead for fourteen years, that is what Theodore said at least.

I love you, 

Draco Lucius Malfoy

Lucius threw the letter even if it didn’t get long, and Narcissa came running into their bedroom, only seconds later. 

“What is it, Lucius, what is it?!” She asked, scared, after she had picked up the letter. 

“Draco is a Triwizard Champion. The Goblet went crazy, with Draco’s words, and now he is expecting me to get him out of there. I can’t get him out of there. I studied the Goblet for months before it went to the school, the contract exists until you have competed in all three of the tasks. I will not be able to get him out…” Lucius’ hands were clutched around the sheets of the bed, and that was the only sign of anger he showed. 

Narcissa sat down next to him, taking his hand, holding it against her cheek. He placed his arms around her and they just held on to each other for a few minutes without saying a word. 

Narcissa cried into Lucius' shoulder, and he swallowed hard, trying over and over to not start crying. He loved Draco so much, he was their only child after years of trying, and now there was a possibility that he lost him. That they lost their son. 

“What if he doesn’t make it…” Narcissa put words on both of their thoughts. 

“He will. We will just tell him not to try and win, but to try and survive. Hopefully the older students realise that there is nothing he could do, and try to keep him alive. I’ll send him a letter explaining the situation, tomorrow”. Lucius sighed. 

“Why tomorrow?”

“I have some research to do tonight, and I did not sleep last night, so I have to sleep some now instead… I know that there is no way to make the bond dissolve with legal magic, but there is always illegal magic, and that is something at least".

Narcissa sighed and kissed him on the forehead, and hugged him. He smiled and kissed her, before she walked out of the room. He on the other hand stayed sitting, waiting for something to happen. He thought back to Draco’s letter and realised pretty quickly that there was a name he recognised. Tom Riddle. 

That name he had read over and over a few years ago. A name that was written in the diary that he had left to the Weasley girl. The Dark Lord’s diary. His old name, the one that they were never told to tell anyone about. 

His father had told him about who the Dark Lord was as a teen, since they were the same age. Lucius had heard a lot of stories from when the Dark Lord was young, and how he became more and more evil for each year that passed, and became more and more of a psychopath as each year passed.  

Lucius didn’t realise that Draco would have to compete against the Dark Lord, until he had already laid down to get a few hours of sleep, before he started to research, and almost had fallen asleep. 

Draco said that the name Tom Riddle was taken from the Goblet, and that means that he was going to have to compete against the Dark Lord himself.

Lucius flew out of bed. “Narcissa! Narcissa! Come here quickly! Now, kindly!” He screamed as he pulled on a gown. He ran out into the corridor and 

down to the living room, and he met Narcissa in the middle of the room. 

“Are you hurt?” She breathed, worried.

“No, but Draco will be in a few weeks”. 

“Did you have a nightmare?”

“No sweetheart, I just realised that Draco wrote one more name in the letter. Tom Riddle!”

“Is that important?”

“He would be very happy that you don’t know that name at all, but Tom Riddle is the Dark Lord. That was his name before he switched to the Dark Lord! Draco is going to compete against the Dark Lord in the Triwizard Tournament!”

Lucius had enough time to catch Narcissa, who passed out in his arms, and all he could feel was panic. He couldn’t breathe, he would lose his son in less than a month…

Chapter Text

Harry James Potter: 

Harry walked quickly against the forest, feeling a pull in his stomach that he had never felt before. It was like something was tied to him and it pulled him. His heart was pounding with an intensity that he had never felt before, or had he?

Harry thought back to his old life, and realised that he had felt this pull before, but played it away as nervosity. It was on the way to the Chamber of Secrets in his second year. It had just gotten worse the closer her had gotten to the diary, and Riddle. The teenaged Riddle had been attractive, Harry wasn’t going to lie about that. 

He had thought about Riddle a lot since last night, enough so that both Ron and Hermione had told him, on different occasions, that he was acting weird, and for them he most likely was, but he was able to play it away as tired and worried about the Tournament, and the competition he had, because he did have competition. 

“Potter, over here!” Malfoy sounded irritated, even though Harry had only been a few minutes late, since his last lesson of the day ended only ten minutes ago. 

“Sorry I’m late”. He breathed out, the pull only getting stronger, and more painful. “Snape kept us for around 20 minutes longer than he should have done.”

“Severus just thinks that you maybe should try during your lessons.” Draco snapped back. 

“Obviously you know Snape, he’s maybe your father?” Harry laughed with a fake laugh. He had missed the bantering between him and Draco, the kind of harmless bantering they had in their first three years, since it stopped completely after the battle of Hogwarts.

“Don’t talk like that to me, Severus has known my parents since he was a child. He is my godfather!” Draco shot back, until Viktor stepped between them. 

“I don’t know vot you are talking about, or vhy you are arguing vith each other, but ve need to vork together, not against each other”. Viktor said calmly, accidentally making a quote that stuck on Harry’s mind. 

We need to work together, not against each other. 

“So, now ve are everyone and I can start. Since both of you go to Hogwarts I think that the most helpful thing vould be if me and Fleur helped you. Is that… ehh… fine for you, Cedric?” He ended the sentence with his confidence running out, and he once again started to stumble over the words. 

Harry had noticed that under the few conversations he had with Viktor. He was confident in the beginning when he was talking, but in the end he started to pull back and stop more between the words. 

Harry had missed when Cedric had said yes, because he was pulled out of his thoughts from someone stepping on a stick, and it snapped in half. He jumped, looking around, like there was something behind him, even if he knew that there was nothing. They were not yet long enough into the war in this life, for anything to attack him, even if Barty Crouch Junior was disguised as Mad-eye Moody. 

Harry returned to his normal breathing right before Fleur started to speak. 

“Zis is getting out of ‘and. Ze two of you, stop. Arguing won’t fix anyzing. ‘Arry, since you don’t know French, I think it is easier  if I take Draco, and mentor ‘im. Cedric ‘as gone to ze same school as both of you, so he can’t teach you very much, more zan you already know. So Viktor, you are responsible for ‘Arry. 

“I know just as many spells as Viktor, it is just that I might know more legal spells than him. I can teach them defensive spells, like I told you yesterday I could”. 

“You know as many legal spells as I do. I am not stupid. I know very vell that I can not use illegal magic here at Hogwarts. If you are good at defensive spells that is good. I can teach them darker spells, still legal, but darker than taught at Hogwarts. Fleur, what can you give them?”

“I could teach zem charms. Beauxbatons focuses a lot on charms”. Fleur crossed her arms, with a look on her face, that told anyone looking that she was offended. Really offended. “We ‘ave always been like zat. Zat is why many of the best charms ‘ave been made at Beauxbatons”. She said it like it was obvious, and Harry noticed that Draco rolled his eyes. 

“Could the three of you possibly stop arguing about Potter and I. We are only a few years younger than the three of you. I really want you to understand that. Mentally we are not much younger than you three, well there is a bigger gap between us and Fleur, than us and you other two, but please. You are arguing about who could mentor each of us. Potter, any idea?”

Harry, who had stood there staring at Draco, because that was not the boy he argued with during his fourth year, that was a young man, who was scared for his life. The Draco he had met during the battle of Hogwarts in his last life, was much closer to this Draco. This Draco was more mature, and showed a lot more feeling. Or maybe it was because he had not had the energy to care in his last life. 

“Potter! Stop staring at me! And answer my question!” Draco exclaimed angrily, and Harry was instantly pulled out of his thoughts. 

“Sorry, never thought you would argue for me” Harry mumbled with a joking tone. 

“I am arguing for both of us, and I am giving you the chance to decide, so now do so!” Draco said, with so much irritation that Harry almost started to laugh. 

“Sure. Viktor, you are my main tutor, and Fleur you are Malfoy’s… Draco’s. Cedric, you get two days each with us. One day on a weekend, and one day during the week, does that sound fine to everyone?”

The three older students nodded and Draco moved his weight from one foot to another. He looked over his shoulders into the forest each time a single sound was hearable.  

“Well, before we continue, Potter, I am thinking of one more thing. If we maybe could act as civil as we have today twice a week, then we maybe could have the lessons with Cedric together, and swap tutors twice a week too. So that is going to give us enough time with each of them to get a little better on whatever each of them want to teach us. And could we maybe walk along the forest instead of standing still. I feel like there is something inside the forest watching us, and I really don’t want that to be possible. 

They started to talk about the idea that Draco had come up with, and it didn’t take long before they had accepted that it was going to happen whether or not they wanted it to. It was simply the easiest way of getting as much information into their heads as possible. 

Then it came to deciding on a place to have the tutoring sessions, and Cedric first told them about a room on the seventh floor that could transform into anything they needed, but neither Harry nor Fleur thought that was a good idea. It took them over fifteen minutes to decide how they were going to do it. Then Viktor said something about having his own room on the boat, and Fleur said the same thing. Madame Maxime had not wanted her to sleep together with the other girls, since they would try and claw her eyes out in her sleep. And Viktor’s reasoning for having a room alone was that Karkaroff favored him. 

It was decided that they were going to do it in their rooms for their private sessions, with their respective tutor, and that Cedric was going to use the Room of Requirement when he met up with him and Draco. 

They had walked for a while now, and even if they were going slowly they were quite long from the castle. Harry had checked so that he had his wand on him, even if he knew that he did. He had made it a habit long ago to keep his wand in his pocket. It was something he started doing after the war, when he started to wait for someone to jump out in front of him and shoot killing curses at him. 

“‘Arry, not wanting to be rude, but where do you live during ze summer?”

“I live with my muggle aunt and uncle”. Harry answered, as fast as he could without really hiding the emotions that were bubbling up inside of him. He had not given Petunia, or Dudley, a single thought since he got to this life, but they must still be as bad as they were to him in his last life.

He had gotten an invitation to a funeral five years after the battle of Hogwarts, and it had been Vernon’s funeral.  He had attended out of pure formality, and Dudley had a daughter, and had lost a lot of weight. Petunia on the other hand looked worse then he had ever seen her, and it turned out that Dudley had gotten a girl pregnant during the summer before Harry’s supposed seventh year at Hogwarts, and he got full custody of the baby. For the first two years Petunia took care of the little girl, but then she and Dudley realised that she was able to use magic. Magnolia Dursley was a witch. 

Harry had not forgiven them directly, but he visited them sometimes each year, and they slowly grew to be friends, him and Dudley at least. Petunia was a lost cause. She died only three years after Vernon, from grief, the doctors said, but Harry had a feeling that Magnolia had something to do with it. 

Magnolia had laughed, cried and smiled at Petunia’s funeral, and she even said sorry while looking at her dead grandmother’s face. That was the first time Mongolia talked in four years. 

Harry had adored the girl, with her red hair and deep blue eyes, and all the freckles covering her face. Magnolia was two years older than James and they had a special bond. They had become best friends the second James could talk. James was the one that talked and she had listened. They had become best friends, and complimented each other really well. 

“If ve are talking about our families, Draco, tell us a little bit about yours”.

Harry noticed how Draco tensed when he got the question, and it took a while before they got an answer from him. 

“Well… I live with my mother and father in the Malfoy Manor. 

“Names?” Fleur questioned, with a light smile. 

“Lucius Malfoy, and Narcissa Malfoy, née Black. 

“You’re an only child?

Draco started talking with Fleur in french, and it was only Cedric who seemed to know what they were talking about, so Harry asked him. Cedric told him and Viktor that he did not speak fluently but that he knew enough to understand what they were talking about. He could not translate, that was basically impossible, but he knew that Draco still was talking about his family. 

Viktor asked Cedric about his family, and Cedric smiled as he started to talk about his parents, and how they had sent him a letter already, about him being the Champion, and how proud they were of him. When Cedric started talking about his little sister. She was five, and he loved her with his whole heart, even if they only met during the holidays, since he was at Hogwarts. 

Cedric talked for maybe five minutes about his sister and how much he loved her. 

“So, Fleur, vot about your family? Can you tell us about them?

“Mon famille?”

“If that means your family, then yes”. 

“I live wiz my muzzer, and my father, and sister by a big lake. My muzzer’s name is Apolline and my father's name is Mael. My sister, Gabrielle, is eight now, and she is going to ‘er second year at Beauxbatons. 

“What?”

“She is in ‘er second year. Is that not correct English?

“Yes it is, but she is going to her second year?” Cedric exclaimed, shocked.

Harry was also shocked, but he kept that to himself, even if he had had the same reaction when Viktor talked about having younger students at Durmstrang. 

“We ‘ave eleven years at Beauxbatons. You start at seven and graduate at eighteen. The intake of students are ze same as ‘ere. Born between September 1st and August 31st ze next year, so some are already almost eight when they start. One fourth of ze students graduate at seventeen, since zair birthdays are in ze summer”. Fleur talked faster than she should have, because her accent slipped through more and more for each accent, even if it was possible to understand what she was saying. 

“Ohh… Okay, then I know that. Interesting”. 

“Durmstrang does the same. Ve start a little earlier in the year than you, but it is not more than ten days or so, and a year later in age”. 

Viktor, Cedric and Fleur started a heated discussion on which of the three schools was the best, and Harry turned so he had his back against them, leaning against a tree. The forest had been scarily calm all day, something that made him think that there was more going on in this life that he wanted. 

It would of course not be permanent, no one, not even Death, would give him a second chance at life. He had been in his “second” life for three days, and he guessed that he might stay there for a year or so, but not more. This was most likely just the transition from life to death, since he didn’t actually know what kind of transition it was. No one alive did, and he was dead, that was something he knew. 

“So Viktor, what about your family? Do you ‘ave any siblings?”

Harry tuned back to reality when he heard the question that Fleur asked Viktor, and listened closely to Viktor’s answer, even if he didn’t know why. 

“I haff three siblings. Teodora, Matea and Yosif. Teodora is the most crafty of us. She builds things all the time. Matea is the most interested in muggles, she haff one of the things that muggles kill each other vith, and she goes to competitions, shooting vith it. Yosif is the kindest of us. He also loves to cook, so he often helps mother in the kitchen. He is good at teaching other people things too”. 

Viktor didn’t say anything about his parents, more than that his brother liked to cook with his mother, and that confused Harry. That was the most Viktor ever said about his mother, and he never talked at all about his father. Not that Harry was going to ask, that was rude. 

The five of them kept walking away from the castle, and Harry noticed how the pull got stronger for each step he took. It hurt him more than he wanted to accept. It felt like something was ripping him into pieces, wanting him to be closer, and was pulling him closer and closer, even if it got more and more painful the closer he got. Like the thing pulling him had been growing inside of him, and only bloomed last night. 

They walked in a comfortable silence, and Fleur had taken out her wand, showing off some spells for Draco and Viktor, while Harry and Cedric walked side by side slowly. 

Harry couldn’t help but to look at Viktor laughing, and how happy he seemed. The last time Harry saw him in his old life he had been newly married with his first child on the way, but he still did not seem happy. He had smiled, laughed, and seemingly loved his wife and their unborn child, but when he was alone there never seemed to be a single smile on his lips. 

After half an hour of talking, walking and laughing they came to a halt. There was someone laying on the grass only a few meters away. A pale boy with dark brown hair. He seemed to be asleep, but quite wounded. 

Harry walked over, to get a better look at the boy’s face, and a face he would recognise everywhere met him. Tom Riddle’s face, even if it looked a little younger than when Harry fought him in his second year. 

“It can’t be… He is… No… He’s supposed to be dead. Dead…” Harry mumbled to himself, ignoring the weird looks he was getting from Cedric, who stood close to him.

Riddle was alive again. It had to be the doing of some magical power, that Harry didn’t know anything about. 

"’Oo is it ‘Arry?”

Harry didn’t answer, he kept his eyes on Riddle, but took a quick step back when he saw Riddle’s eyes fly open. 

Tom Marvolo Riddle: 

Tom opened and closed his eyes a few times, to be able to focus on the people in front of him. A thought that it could be his friends crossed his mind for about two seconds, before he realised that he was in the future. 

When his eyes finally were able to focus enough to see more than the contours of the people standing in front of him, he looked straight into the eyes of one of the boys. A black hair boy, with the deepest, greenest eyes he had ever seen. They were really beautiful, and a colour Tom had never seen in the Wizarding World before. 

The boy took a few steps back, and paled when their eyes met, which Tom thought was weird, but he broke the eye contact, and looked over at the only girl there. She had silvery blond hair, dark blue eyes, and she was eerily beautiful. Beautiful in a way that was scary, like in nature. The most beautiful flowers were usually the most dangerous ones. 

The tallest of the boys had dark brown hair and bright gray eyes. It was like a stone that was lit up by the sun. He looked concerned  and conflicted, more than scared, and Tom realised quickly that the wound he had inflicted on himself had bled through the shirt. 

He looked between the last two boys, and decided to look at the older one of them first. He had dark brown shoulder length hair and light brown eyes, his nose was hooked like it had hit the ground a few times, hard. 

The last boy was… Tom had to take a double take. He was pale, blond and quite good looking. Very much like his best friend. 

“Abraxas?” He asked quietly. 

“No. Draco. Abraxas is my grandfather. Why are you asking if I am my grandfather?” The blond boy said, while halfrolling his eyes the same way Abraxas does… did. 

“What year is it?”

“It is ze first November of nineteen ninety-four. Why are you asking us zis?”

The girl’s accent was interesting. It was not the normal English accent Tom had met in the Muggle World. It was the kind of accent he had only heard once in his life, and that was when he and Abraxas were in France. Abaxas had been fluent in French since he was very little, but he still tried to include Tom as much as possible. 

“Why are you here?” The younger black haired boy said, and if eyes could kill Tom would have been dead, five times over.

“I don’t know. I was in my bedroom a few hours ago, and then I was in a white room, and I got sucked out from the wall” He got five mistrusting looks and sat up, even if his wound hurt, and he could feel it slowly splitting, but he didn’t scream. He had been thought worse at the orphanage, when he was younger. That was what he had to tell himself over and over, while standing up. “It is true. You might not understand that, but I have no idea how I got here. A few hours I sat on my bed in the Slytherin dorm, and now I am in the future! I am over fifty years in the future, and I…” Tom took a deep breath, and the wound, where he had been holding his hand, started bleeding profusely. “...Need medical attention”. 

It felt bad making himself so vulnerable but he had no choice. The pain was so bad that he almost could not stand up, and he was losing a lot of blood.  

He felt a hand on his back, and looked up from the ground, that he had been staring down at. It was the boy who looked like Abraxas. 

“Why?...”

“You knew my grandfather, that should be enough to make me not trust you, but apparently you revealing that did the exact opposite, and I was raised to help people, and you are wearing an old Hogwarts uniform, so you might as well be telling the truth”. 

“Thank you”. Tom breathed, as he placed more and more of his weight onto the blond boy. 

“Diggory!… Sorry, I mean Cedric, could you help me. He is heavier than he looks”. 

“Never done this before?” The tallest of the boys said as he walked the last two meters, to close the gap in between them, and smirked. Tom guessed that it had to be Cedric… Diggory.

“No, why would I have?”

“It is notable that you are an only child.”. 

Tom watched the two of them, Cedric and Draco, Abraxas’ grandson… half-jokingly argue over his head. They walked fast, but Tom didn’t really care. He was in so much pain that he could not breathe fully. He was shaking, and the only thing that actually held him standing was the arms of the two other boys. 

“How are you doing?”

“It’s painful, but I’ll survive”. 

“Want us to walk slower?”

“No, the faster we are at the Hospital Wing, the faster I can get the wound healed and try to get home, to my own time”.

“Okay, to distract you from the vound, tell us how you got it”. The older dark haired boy said an accent that Tom never had heard before. 

“As I said before I don’t know how I got here, but when I did, I saw thousands of spiders crawling one way. That is a sign that there are Acromantulas close by, so I ran. Fast and I managed to run straight into something, and it left this wound. I have no idea of what I ran into, all I know is that I got wounded, and now I think it is infected”. Tom calmly explained, with a tiny smile on his lips. 

He knew he could not laugh, but everything was making him want to. He really, really wanted to laugh at how absurd the situation was, but if he started laughing it would turn into crying, and he didn’t know these people, so he could not cry in front of them, even if he already had overshared a lot with them.

They got into the castle pretty quickly and it did not look any different from what Tom remembered. It was still beautiful, and it still felt like a home to him, but the atmosphere was different. It was less scared, and nervous than in his time. 

“Has Grindelwald gotten defeated yet?”

“Who?” Cedric questioned, kind of answering Tom’s question. 

“Grindelwald. Gellert Grindelwald. In my time he was the worst Dark Lord to ever have existed. So did someone defeat him?”

“Yes. Grindelwald is defeated. Not dead, but if someone vould vant to find him they vould haff to ask a lot of questions. He is locked inside his own prison.”

“Who defeated him?”

“Albus Dumbledore”.

Tom’s heart dropped, and he could feel his heart jump over a beat. Dumbledore. Albus Dumbledore defeated the darkest and most cruel Dark Lord in hundreds, or maybe thousands of years. The man that Tom really hoped not to have to see again, because that man had never really liked him. 

“Is he…”

“Dead?”

“No, he is alive and healthy.” The green eyed boy said, with a tone in his voice that scared Tom.

They kept walking in silence, a very uncomfortable silence, and Tom wondered how long it would take before any teacher or any of the students they passed would notice that he didn’t fit into the group. 

His clothes were a little bit too small, since he had not had the money to buy new ones for the year, and it was completely different from what the other students were wearing. Dark green, only the first year students had black uniforms, and his tie was Slytherin green with the tip dipped in a silver colour, and the Slytherin emblem embroidered on. 

The doors to the Hospital were painted in a bright green with red crosses on them, apparently a hint to the muggle world, as the only girl had said with a distaste in her voice. 

Tom had not realised that until she said it, and he hated it. He was supposed to try and distance himself from everything muggle. In a few years, in his time, no one was supposed to remember his muggle heritage, and he was supposed to be able to pass for a pureblood.  

That was the one thing that he knew was good. Since almost no one should remember his name, he could simply say that he is a pureblood. He could get his muggle father erased from the world. 

“Oh… Dear, I will be out in a minute, I just have to get some supplies. Put the one of you wounded on the bed over there”. A woman who had been standing over a bed, with a passed out girl in, pointed at a bed and ran into a room that Tom guessed was the storage room.

He sat down on the bed that she had pointed on, and tried to ignore the pain. It was shooting deeper inside of him, and he felt ill. Taking deep and slow breaths became hard, and Tom felt more and more lightheaded for each one. 

His grip on the sheets became tighter and he slowly let go with one hand to place it over the wound. There was a lot of blood, it was dripping down his side, and Tom had no idea on how much longer he could go without passing out. 

The woman walked out, and Cedric was the one to start talking. He pointed at Tom, and exaggerated everything he said with hand movements, and the woman that he had heard being called Madam Pomfrey, turned to him.

Tom vaguely recognised her face, but she apparently recognised him much more. 

“It can’t be. Riddle?

“Yes, and I can’t really place you. Pomfrey…” Tom had to think, since he really didn’t want to embarrass himself. “Poppy. You are Poppy Pomfrey. You are six months and three days younger than me, a Ravenclaw and obsessed with anything that has to do with healing and medical things. Both muggle and wizard things. You are a halfblood, who has separated parents, and you live one week with your wizard father and one week with your muggle mother, and you have to live completely different lives there”.

“Riddle, it scares me that you know so much about my life, but that was over fifty years ago. You know that?”

“Yes, Pomfrey, I do. I know very well that I am in the future, and I have no idea on how to get back. 

“Well, you are wounded, and I will have to take care of that”. 

Tom didn’t let go of the wound, and he didn’t move to let her even touch it. All he wanted to do was run away, but he would pass out if he stood up. 

“You will have to take off your shirt if I am going to help you”. 

“Can’t you just use a spell or something and fix it?”

“As much as I would want to do that, I can unfortunately not do that”.

“Then you don’t have to help me. I’ll fix it myself”. 

“Does this have anything to do with us going to school together?”

“No, Pomfrey, it doesn’t”.

“Does it have anything to do with you always skipping the well checks at school?

“What, how did you know that!” Tom exclaimed before he realised that she could not have known that and he right out told her that he did. 

“So it does?”

“No… I… That is because of a different reason. I skip the monthly well checks for a different reason”. He quickly explained himself as he looked over at the five who got him there. They had sat down in a little waiting area close to the door, and they were talking. All but the green eyed, black haired boy. He was staring straight at Tom. 

Tom was quiet for a while, before he sighed, as blood started leaking through his fingers.  The pain was worse than ever, and even if he had been through worse, he could smell on the blood, that the wound had gotten infected.

“Okay, you can heal it, but you are not allowed to ask a single question and you will have to do it in private since I don’t want anyone else to see”. 

“Sure, I’ll put up privacy shields”. Pomfrey said as she pulled the drapes close, so it was just the two of them in there. 

She mumbled a few spells, while waving her wand in some weird way. Tom knew it was privacy shields, even if she didn’t tell him. He stared at the floor for a few minutes, before letting his hand slip off the wound, really inspecting it for the first time since he got it. 

He slipped his shirt off, ignoring the horrified scream coming from Pomfrey. She didn’t touch him, like the few others who knew, had done the second they had seen them. The scars.

Long scars, going along his chest, stomach and back, and he had had them for too long. He remembered getting them, and only a few days later, when he gained consciousness again, the boys who had made him get the scars died. He had nothing to do with that, but it was still Tom who had been blamed for it. 

“Riddle, who…?

Pomfrey’s silence said more than any words could. Tom hated it, but that was the reaction he got from everyone. Every single time. 

“I said no questions. Now heal me, and never say a word about this to anyone”. 

“Do I know the reason why you used to skip the health checks now?”

“Yes, you do”. Tom sighed, and then he turned on the tone that he used to have when he wanted to scare people. “And you are not going to tell anyone at all, about these scars, and you are not going to ask me anything about them, okay?” He hissed, well, almost hissed, he had not yet perfected hissing in english the same way he could in parseltongue, but it worked. 

Pomfrey backed into the bed on the other side of the drapes, and the pure horror in her eyes told him that she knew that voice. 

“You sound too much like him…”

“Like who?”

“You-Know-Who”. 

“No, Pomfrey, I don’t know who he is? Could you give me an actual name?”

“I’d rather not…

“I could ask someone else…”

“No… Don’t. His name was Lord Voldemort”. Pomfrey shuddered as she said the name, and Tom looked down at his hands, before slowly nodding and nudged her to keep healing him. 

Tom felt Pomfrey’s cold hand touching the areas around the wound, and about the same time as the wound had closed itself and he had put on his shirt again, he actually realised what she had said. She had said “Lord Voldemort”, the one name he had tried to get his friends to call him. Firstly as a joke, when he was in third year, since all of them had made anagrams with their full names. Tom’s had become “I am Lord Voldemort”, and everyone had thought it was funny, so Abraxas had started calling him it as a joke, and in some weird way Voldemort had stuck. Usually shortened to Vol, but Tom had always thought it was better than Voldemort. And a few months ago, he had asked if he could legally change his name to Voldemort, and the paper he had in his hand right before he got sucked out of the white room, had been the papers telling him that he could, if he wanted to do it, and him trying to write Voldemort as a signature on another piece of paper, it was harder than he expected. 

“What did he do?” Tom said with a voice that was so close to cracking it could be. 

“He killed thousands of witches and wizards, and the person that killed him, or so it says at least, was a baby”.

She didn’t say more, and Tom could feel that he was close to passing out, over ten seconds before he did, and the last thing he heard was a scream, as he had started laughing. 

Draco Lucius Malfoy: 

Draco got pulled out of his quite interesting conversion with Fleur, by a scream. A scream that was too high pitched for his liking. He watched the drapes get pulled away, and Madam Pomfrey ran out. She ran out of the Hospital Wing without ever looking at them. She ran faster than he had seen her run before, and Draco could guess enough from the context that it was the boy that had scared her. The boy had seemed very sweet, and a little weird, but he had said he had timetraveled and Draco had known that it was true from the look in the boy’s eyes. 

The five of them looked at each other, one face at a time. Draco met Potter’s eyes once, and he could see that the other boy was livid.

The kind of angry that Draco only had seen his father be once. He had been eight, and a man, that Draco got to know was an inspector, had walked into their home and started looking everywhere. Checking every drawer, every crack in the floor, everything, and he had turned Draco’s room upside down, even if Draco had begged him not to touch it. He had broken all Draco’s quills, and that had made his father livid at the man. The inspector had gotten kicked out in less than a minute, and he had replaced all of Draco’s quills. All but one. That one Draco’s father left broken in a display case in the living room. Draco had gotten it from his paternal grandmother, as she was on her deathbed, and it had been one of his most valued possessions at the time. 

“Draco, vat is it?”

“I…” Draco thought about telling the others. “I have just never seen Madam Pomfrey get that scared, and he doesn’t seem very harmful”.

All five of them looked over, and Draco couldn’t help but notice their facial expressions were very different. Fleur and Krum’s were curious, but nothing else, Diggory’s was confused, and worried, and Potter’s was angry. 

It was eerily quiet as they looked at the boy, none of them took a breath. He was still covered in blood, and Draco realised that he never had given them his name. 

“Did he tell anyone his name?” He asked quietly. 

A unison “No” came from three of the four others, and Draco’s eyes slid over to give Potter a look. He was pale, and his exceptionally green eyes were burning with a hatred that scared Draco. 

After fifteen minutes of trying to talk and not look at the boy, the doors to the Hospital Wing slammed open, and Madam Pomfrey, followed by Dumbledore and McGonagall, ran in. 

Dumbledore and Madam Pomfrey quickly walked over to the boy on the bed, and McGonagall stopped at the table they were sitting at. 

“Has he moved any since Poppy left?”

“No, ‘e ‘asn’t” Fleur mumbled, looking more confused for each second that passed. 

Draco kept his eyes on Dumbledore and the boy. The boy looked harmless laying passed out on the hospital bed, but apparently he wasn’t, since both Dumbledore and Madam Pomfrey looked at him like he had killed someone.

“What’s happening?”

“Stay where you are. We don’t know where he came from, but he is dangerous”. Dumbledore almost yelled at them, and that was the first time in four years Draco had heard Dumbledore yell. 

It was the only answer he got, until about five minutes later when another bloodcurling scream was heard, and Draco turned around, having sat with his back against the bed, and looked at the boy who suddenly was chained against the bed. 

“Riddle, don’t move!

Riddle? Draco wondered why Dumbledore called the boy Riddle and after a little while he realised that Madam Momfrey also had called him Riddle. The boy’s name must be Riddle, and Draco guessed that it was his last name, since having that name as a first name would be really weird. 

He watched as Riddle started to scream once again, and Dumbledore pulled out his wand. Madam Pomfrey was pale, and shaking, like she had realised something, something bad. 

Over an hour passed in complete silence since Dumbledore had put up a soundbarrier around the three of them. The five of them outside of the barrier could still see what was happening, but not hear a single word that was uttered. 

“Who do you think he is?” Krum asked Fleur , with a nervousness in his voice Draco never had heard before. 

“I ‘ave no idea. ‘E seems out of place. Don’t you zink?”

Diggory smiled ironically, and looked over at McGonagall, who was standing around three meters away from them, quite obviously listening to every single word they said. 

“They were scared of him? Why?” Diggory questioned in a way that made sound both like an answer to Fleur’s question and another question.

Draco thought back to when they met the boy for the first time. He had laid passed out in the grass, either sleeping or unconscious, and when they had woken Riddle up he had flinched in a way that only someone who had gone through enough trauma would. 

“‘E seemed scared when we told ‘im zat Dumbly-Dorr was still alive. It was like ‘e knew Dumbly-Dorr in ‘is own time too.

“You really think he is from the past?” Draco shot in when he had the chance, even if he already knew that Riddle was from the past.

“Yes, I zink zat ‘e is from ze past. ‘E knew ‘Ogwarts pretty well for someone neither of you had seen, and ‘e seemed to be your age. Zair is enough… preuve… Draco?”

Draco smiled at Fleur. “The word you are searching for is evidence.”

“Zank you Draco, as I said, zair is enough… evidence for it to show one zing, and zat is zat Riddle isn’t from zis time.”

“What evidence?” It was McGonagall that asked.

“‘E is clothed in ze old ‘Ogwarts uniform, and ‘e is talking oldschool. ‘Is name is also a zing. I would guess zat it is Tom Riddle, and zat means ‘e is ze sixth champion. I zink it ‘as to do with ze Goblet, since it is ze most… ehh… dangerous artefact in ze world, and anuzzer one doesn’t exist”.

“How do you know that, I vould vant to know those things, but I don’t”

“Viktor, I visited ze ‘Ogwarts library, and I checked on zings the second I got to know zat we were going to ‘Ogwarts. Zat led me down a road zat talked about zings like uniforms, and ze people zat ‘as won zings, and I remember a name zat stuck to me since it didn’t sound like a wizardname. It was Tom Riddle, and I don’t zink zair are zat many wizards named Tom Riddle”. 

The room grew more quiet and then the silencing charm broke. The scream that echoed through the Hospital Wing made Draco shudder, Fleur put a hand over her mouth in shock, both Diggory and Krum slowly turned their heads against the bed where Riddle was laying, and Potter gave the boy an unimpressed look. 

Riddle kicked and tried to get away, screaming words in a hissing language, which Draco was not able to recognise. He listened closely to the hissed screams, and then he studied Dumbledore. 

“Mal… Draco, look at the wand!” Diggory whispered it into his ear and Draco’s eyes directly went to Dumbledore’s wand. 

He stared at it for over a minute, before he realised that the magic from the curse used, that was pumping out of the wand, was looking very much like the magic from the cruciatus curse. Draco wanted to run over and rip Dumbledore’s wand from him, but he didn’t. Instead he chose the way his father would have done.

“Potter, fancy checking him for dark magic together with me?”

“Yes, I can do that”. Potter smiled while his voice cracked, like he had a history with Riddle, even though that was impossible.

They walked over to the bed that Riddle was chained to, and Draco heightened his wand, mumbling a spell he had learnt long before he got a wand. A spell that could detect if someone was under, or had died under, one of the three unforgivable curses. 

The spell lit up in blue, which was an indicator that Riddle was under at least one of the Unforgivables and that made Draco act faster than he had ever done. He snatched Dumbledore’s wand at the same time as he placed a hand over Riddle’s heart pushing down as hard as he could, since that would stop the heart from starting to contract trying to find its old rhythm. 

“DRACO MALFOY! What have you done!” The screams Dumbledore let out that made even McGonagall shocked, only made Draco hold onto Dumbledore’s wand harder. He was shaking with adrenaline, since it was the first time he actually had done something as stupid to a teacher. Everyone knew that you didn’t just rip a wand out of someone’s hand. 

“I don’t care what I have done. I know one thing, and that is that it is illegal to use the Unforgivables on someone. You did only two minutes ago, and his heart was already contracting in an irregular beat, which is one of the most dangerous things that can happen if you are tortured with the Crustius curse for too long. You could have killed him!”

Dumbledore blinked a few times and then he sighed, exaggerated. “Mr Malfoy, you don’t know whose life you just saved, but if you let him sleep in your dorm, explaining exactly who he is is to your friends and have them accept him, then I will accept it, The boy you saved was not an innocent little boy, he is Lord Voldemort”. 

It took Draco almost fifteen seconds from when Dumbledore said the Dark Lord’s name until Draco realised what he said, and he looked over at the boy. 

Draco’s grandfather had told him a lot of stories about the Dark Lord when he was young, and how he had been a wonderful person, and a sweetheart that very much didn’t want people around him commenting on who he was. Riddle, even if Draco’s grandfather had called him Vol, since it was the nickname he had been given pretty early by the closest of the friends, had never wanted anything more than being accepted. 

“I know psychopaths and the thing that makes them act on their behaviour is trauma. They can live like a normal human being, but when they go through something traumatic when they are young, it usually stays with them forever, and they want both payback and a reason as to why it happened”. Draco didn’t lie to Dumbledore, even if he could have. He had a friend who was a halfblood girl named Ashley, and the two of them had been best friends until Ashley’s stepfather had taken her younger sister and killed her. That made Ashley burn with a fire inside and kill the rest of her family, calculating that the pain she would go through burning up would be less than it would be if she continued to live knowing her stepfather killed her sister. 

Draco only knew it because she had sent away all the owls with letters to her friends and to the rest of her family. She had been nine at the time, and even if he was two years younger than her at the time he remembered it clearly.

“It is Lord Voldemort we are talking about”. 

“No, it isn’t. It’s Tom Riddle. A boy my age, he is not yet Voldemort, and we still don’t know what made him become the Dark Lord. It might have been you and the Headmaster then, who ignored his pleads for help. He begged to be able to stay at Hogwarts during the summers, did you listen? NO! You did not! You left a literal child to fend for himself in the muggleworld, where he was picked on for being different!”

“And Mr Malfoy, how do you know this?”

“Tom Marvolo Riddle spent more than his fair share of time in the Malfoy Manor. My grandfather, Abraxas Malfoy, took the boy under his wings and basically saved his life. Something that none of the teachers at Hogwarts wanted to do. All because Riddle tried to survive living in the muggle world, even if he was magical”. Draco didn’t know where the arguments came from, but his brain pulled toward memories that he had not realised that he still had, and most of them he recognised ever so slightly. 

It took Draco a while to understand that Dumbledore had grown quiet, even if there wasn't any need for him to be quiet. 

“You are saying I can stay?”

Draco looked over at the bed where Riddle was sitting up, still in chains. 

“Yes. I am. If Dumbledore is done arguing I could take you to the Slytherin Dorm, where you are going to stay.”

“Wait, what! I never said he was able to stay!” Dumbledore almost shouted. 

“Well, the Tournament makes him unable to leave. He has to compete, so if possible, could you move out of the way. I have to get him down to the Slytherin common room.”

Draco helped Riddle up from the hospital bed, and put an arm around him to keep him standing. The taller boy was trembling, and Draco knew from own experience that the shaking would stay for hours. 

They left the Hospital wing with the other four champions behind them, and Potter turned off to the Gryffindor Common room, brooding with anger, while the other three followed him to the Slytherin Common room, where Draco pointed Riddle to the only unused bed in the dorm. The one closest to the window. 

“What did you mean with the sixth Champion?” Riddle asked, and the dorm that had the rest of the champions but Potter, and the rest of the 4th year Slytherin boys in it grew quiet in less than a second. 

Riddle looked over each one of them, and then he met Draco’s eyes once again. 

“I don’t want to know, do I?”

“No, you don’t, but I still have to explain to you… Later…