SD: CH172 - UNSEEN THREATS PART 1

The story is about to take a darker turn. Usually I love dark turns. 

There I was, in my psychic training room, suggesting an absolutely horrifying but workable idea to Amelia and Emmeline. The next moment, all three of us were racing down to the dungeons after hearing a sharp, pain-filled scream that almost certainly belonged to a certain ponytailed, intelligent muggle born with a mousy attitude.

Penelope Clearwater.

We bolted down the oak-paneled corridor, boots hammering marble. Emmeline was right behind me, wand in hand. Amelia too, shedding her existential crisis faster than wet underwear — snapped into motion, cursing violently beside me. 

At the intersection, Hestia appeared, wide-eyed and pale.

“From the dungeons!” she barked.

“You have a dungeon?” Emmeline called out, somehow curious even while sprinting. “In a modern manor like this?” 

“More secrets, no doubt,” Amelia growled.

“Yeah, well, given my experience, I wasn’t sure how long civility would last, and things would turn barbaric.” I snipped, heart hammering against my ribs.

A half-truth. For one, my dungeon wasn’t medieval. No chains. No cells. Just sleek reinforced rooms, layered with containment wards and failsafes.

Which apparently weren’t as good as I expected them to be.

Jumping down the top of the staircase, I cast a quick anti-velocity spell, and rolled quickly to keep my momentum. Clasping my hand against a Potter ancestor’s portrait hung on that corridor, I slipped through a spatial path opening directly into the dungeon, while Amelia and the others followed Hestia down the main entrance.

And there she was — Penelope Clearwater — researcher, enchanter, occasional bedmate — pinned against the far wall. By a man whose eyes gleamed with manic, feral light.

Barty Crouch Junior.

Just barely two yards away from me. Slowly, carefully, I drew my wand. Barty had his fingers clamped around her throat, and her wand pressed against her pussy — clearly the man was a sadist bastard. Even from this distance, my highly sensitive senses picked up his tremors, and that constant mutter —

“Must not be seen... must not be seen... Father said... Father said...”

Penelope kicked and flailed, gasping, her face turning an alarming shade of red.

Right then, Emmeline, Hestia and Amelia rushed in, the latter raising a hasty shield in response to a malicious yellow curse that went flying in her direction.

“Let her go! NOW!” Emmeline barked, wand raised.

Barty responded by tightening his grip, and Penelope’s shriek became a thin, rasping gasp.

“Let her go? She — she made me SEEN! FATHER SAID I MUST NOT BE SEEN! AVADA —”

I met Amelia’s eyes, and flicked my wand right then, switching his other hand — grasping at Penelope’s throat — with my own hand. The ‘renegade’ arm smacked Barty in the cheek as hard as possible, throwing him off-guard. Amelia instantly performed quick flicks, and Penelope vanished, and a tiny brown mouse dropped, squeaking, to the floor, skittering madly away.

Emmeline followed that by a quick stunner at Barty, while I switched my hand back. The madman crumpled to the floor, twitching once before going still.

Silence.

Only the frantic scratching of Penelope-the-Mouse echoed in the room.

Emmeline lowered her wand, but her eyes stayed sharp, scanning for secondary threats.

“You took a bloody risk, Director,” she said coldly. “He had her wand.”

Amelia holstered her own wand with crisp finality. “In a hostage situation, always shoot the hostage. Conflict resolved. Besides, I knew Harry had his own thing going on.”

She recited it like it was a law of nature.

I exhaled slowly, feeling the adrenaline bleed out of me — leaving something colder in its place.

Penelope squeaked indignantly under a cabinet.

“Right,” I muttered, crouching down. I scooped her up carefully; she squirmed furiously in my palm, her tiny heartbeat hammering against my fingers.

“Yeah, yeah, I know. We’ll fix you in a second.”

I tucked her securely into my robe pocket. She burrowed in instinctively, still trembling.

Amelia turned to me, her face tight.

"Explain," she ordered. "Now. Starting with why there's an insane Death Eater in your basement."

Emmeline crossed her arms. "Especially one who’s supposed to be dead."

Hestia, who’d been quiet until now, stammered out, "I thought — I thought he—"

“Wasn’t killed,” I said grimly. “I still have a use for him.”

Hestia's voice climbed a notch higher. “Then why didn’t you tell me?”

I scrubbed a hand down my face.

“Let me guess,” said Amelia scathingly. “Another long story.”

I exhaled. Whatever I did, it seemed I was always climbing uphill when it came to gaining her trust. Maybe because of my habit of shooting myself in the foot when it came to events involving her.

“Yes, and a story I don’t fancy repeating six times.”

“Quit stalling, Harry. These secrets are going to cause more damage than help.”

“Not stalling, prioritizing," I said, turning to Hestia. “Have they arrived?”

“In the summer room,” said Hestia. “I had them waiting until you were done with your session.”

“...Okay. Get them to the War Room.”

“You have a dungeon and a war-room?” Emmeline quipped.

I sighed, and regarded Hestia. “Set everything up. Also, mirror-call Hermione. Tell her to get out of Hogwarts and meet you at Hogsmeade.”

“I doubt it’d be as easy as you make it seem,” said Amelia. “Miss Granger does not share your special perk as a pureblood lord.”

“She’ll manage,” I said off-handedly. 

“She said she’ll meet me in Hogsmeade in five minutes,” said Hestia, who had just finished making that call. 

Amelia glowered at both of us. “I’m working with a bunch of reprobates.”

“Don’t worry, we’ll have matching t-shirts soon,” I said, smirking. Yes, showing Hermione the secret ways in and out of Hogwarts was truly a good idea.

“Fine,” Amelia said bitterly. “I guess I’ll make myself useful and collect Miss Granger from Hogsmeade. Jones, set everything up.” She paused for a moment, and flicked her wand, and the mouse in Hestia’s hand reverted back to Penelope, who screamed, before Amelia hit her with a sleeping hex, making the girl collapse in Hestia’s arms. 

“Someone needs to get her a calming draught, and some dreamless sleep potion.”

With that, she left.

I walked slowly toward Barty Crouch Junior. Up close, he looked worse than I remembered.

Gaunt. Hollow. His robes hanging off him like rags. Dark veins snaked up his temples, pulsing faintly with some internal corruption. Even unconscious, he muttered under his breath.

"Must not be seen... must not be seen..."

He’s not really alive anymore, I realized. Being under the Imperius had taken more than just his free will, it had utterly damaged his psyche to the degree that it overwrote everything about him.

Just a puppet. A broken doll, still twitching because no one remembered to cut the strings.

A power that I too, had in my hands. One that I had wisely kept myself from truly experimenting with, but one that I had in my arsenal nonetheless. As an incubus lord, enthralling was part of my magic, part of my existence. Believing that it was my authority to ensnare others was not only acceptable, but it was also my prerogative.

At least, that was what the incubus in me thought.

But it was a slippery slope. Just like Moody had warned — do it enough times, and I wouldn’t ensnare others for a purpose any more. My purpose would be to ensnare, at which point, I would truly become like the monsters I — we were currently fighting.

Emmeline moved to stand beside me, quiet.

“You knew he was alive,” she said.

I nodded once.

“And you... kept him here,” she said softly. Not accusation — just confirmation.

“Had to,” I muttered. “Couldn’t let him loose. Couldn’t kill him either. Like I said — I need him.”

“So you shoved him in a box and pretended it was dealt with.”

I didn’t argue.

Because she wasn’t wrong.

“Technically, I dosed him with the Draught of Living Death. I didn’t realize the effects could slowly degrade over time.”

“Of course it would. No magic is permanent. Why would this be any different?”

I turned to look at Hestia. “What was Penelope doing here?”

“She asked for permission to run experiments in the dungeon,” Hestia said slowly. “She needed direct access to the wardstones.”

I closed my eyes for a beat.

“Curiosity killed the cat,” I muttered.

“Which might’ve been avoided,” Hestia said tartly, “if you’d trusted us.”

Still didn’t argue.

No point.

“Get the others to the War room,” I said. “Grab some chairs. You’re gonna want to sit for this.”

Because once we started down this road — there would be no turning back.

....

....

It’s a funny thing, what desperation does to rules.

Barty Crouch Sr. — Mr. Law-and-Order himself, poster boy for "justice is blind" — didn’t just bend the rules when it came to his son. He incinerated them, buried the ashes, and then arrested anyone who asked where the smoke went.

He freed Barty Crouch Jr. from Azkaban the old-fashioned way. Substitution. Junior’s mother — already dying, soul worn down like sandpaper — begged for it. Traded places under the nose of the Dementors. Polyjuice potion. One dying woman for one guilty son. A family secret stitched together with cowardice and blind hope.

They left her there to rot in Junior’s cell, clothed in his face and screaming in his voice, while the real Barty Jr. slipped back home under an Invisibility Cloak and an iron chain of secrecy.

I’d almost admire it. If it weren’t so pathetic.

For years, Crouch Sr. kept his son prisoner inside their home.  

Not metaphorically. Literally.

An actual prison. 

Chains. Magical compulsions. A mother’s death traded for a father’s shame. And house-elf surveillance, because nothing says "healthy family dynamics" like enslaving someone to watch your failures for you.

Winky — the elf in question — was tasked with keeping Junior quiet, docile, invisible. It worked. For a while. Maybe Crouch Sr. even convinced himself it was redemption. Mercy. A second chance.

But guilt rots slower than ambition. Maybe that’s what happened to Crouch. Made him messy. Unfocussed. And that allowed Junior’s mind to be eaten by resentment, soaked in half-formed dreams of Dark Marks burning back to life.

All Crouch Sr. did was build a pressure cooker and throw away the pressure valve.

It didn’t matter that Voldemort fell. It didn’t matter that Junior was supposed to be a secret the world had already forgotten. A house-elf’s loyalty and a father's silence weren’t enough to contain what had been made in Azkaban.

The sad bit is — that they had all forgotten one simple thing.

No one leaves Azkaban whole.

They just leave differently broken.

“Unbelievable.” said Amelia, after I finished what was effectively the prelude to an entire year of madness. “All of that happened under my bloody nose?”

After the sudden, almost-disastrous break, we had moved back to one of the sitting rooms. We had woken Penelope up, but she was still sobbing, stuck in PTSD over her recent experience. Her skin was still pale, blotchy around her throat where Crouch had grabbed her. Anastasia had taken her to the next room, and dosed her with a mild mix of calming drop and dreamless sleep.

She wouldn't be waking up for a few hours at the very least.

That had left Emmeline standing near the wall, arms crossed, face blank. Narcissa was sprawled on the couch, looking entirely too amused, with Anastasia sat beside her, cool but wary. Hermione sat on a chair, looking ready to throw rapid-fire questions, and finally me — leaned back in the central chair, feeling the cushions resist me like they knew this wasn’t going to be comfortable for anyone. 

Hestia though, sat hunched on the farthest chair, knees tucked in, wand clenched tightly in her fists. She hadn't said a word. 

“What happened after?” asked Anastasia.

“The thing about pressure cookers is that eventually,” I said. “They explode. Usually when it’s least convenient.”

I met her eyes. “In my original timeline, all Junior managed to do was cast the Dark Mark, before Crouch’s elf caught up with him and took him away. I’m guessing Voldemort might have sensed it, so he, or more accurately — Wormtail found him. Following trails nobody else wanted to sniff. The stink of broken magic and broken people. A ruin recognizing another ruin. Wormtail found a chained madman and realized, with whatever shriveled brain cells he had left, that madness could be weaponized.”

“How do you weaponize a half-baked vegetable?” asked Hestia.

“Simple,” said Harry. “Junior didn’t need promises. He needed purpose. And what greater purpose than vindication against the very same father that held him under the imperius for all those years?”

“Harry,” Amelia demanded in a tone of warning. “Are you telling me that Crouch Sr. is —”

“Imperiused? I doubt it. But don’t take my word for it.”

“What happened after?” asked Emmeline.

“Comedy,” I said. “The Grand Conspiracy. Feel the capitals? The plan that would lead to the glorious resurrection of the Dark Lord.”

“The tournament?” questioned Emmeline. “I’m guessing Crouch Jr. was the one that put your name in, and ensured your selection.”

“Yeah, not sure if it could be called a plan, but yeah. Honestly, you'd expect dark rituals, armies gathering, soul-eating monstrosities riding storm clouds into battle. But no, the master plan was: Break into Hogwarts. Get Harry Potter’s name into a goblet. And lastly, rig a centuries-old international tournament full of lethal obstacles designed to kill full-grown adults — not to kill me, mind you, but to gently guide me through it. All of that just to hand me a pretty little trophy that’s secretly a portkey. A portkey that whisks me off to a graveyard so Voldemort can steal…” 

I looked at everyone’s expectant faces. 

“A nick of blood.”

Given the blank faces I was getting, everyone else was of the same mind.

“...that's it?” Emmeline voiced. “All of that for a nick of blood?”

“Just a paper cut,” I confirmed. “A tablespoon of magical teenager blood. The Dark Lord’s entire rebirth boiled down to a glorified blood donation.”

Really, I could blame Rowling for writing such a shitty excuse. But when the world turns real, who are you gonna blame?

Years of planning. Months of spying. Rigging ancient magical artifacts. Murdering Ministry officials. Corrupting half of Hogwarts' security protocols.

All so Voldemort could gloriously resurrect himself like some kind of evil Tinkerbell — needing only enough applause and Potter plasma to reconstitute his skinny snake-self into a body.

“I’m telling you. If it weren’t so horrifying, it would be pathetic. In fact, it was pathetic. And none of it would have worked if I had simply tripped on the Third Task and sprained my ankle. Or if the Goblet had gotten indigestion. Or if, I don’t know, anyone competent had been paying attention at literally any point.”

And then Narcissa snorted. 

She hadn't spoken much until now. She rarely wasted breath unless it counted.

She lounged at the corner of the salon, glass of white wine untouched, gaze sharper than any spell I'd seen flung at the World Cup. The kind of look that could scalp you alive without messing up her manicure.

"You make it sound so... juvenile.”

I arched an eyebrow. "It was. Voldemort staged a soap opera using one magical toddler and three rigged games."

"No." Her voice was velvet over steel. "It wasn't. It couldn’t."

The others quieted immediately. When Narcissa Black deigned to correct you, you listened.

“Perhaps…” said Emmeline. “You could offer your own perspective on this?”

"You forget," said Narcissa, setting her glass down with a delicate click, "that the Goblet is ancient. Older than Hogwarts, if the whispered archives are to be believed. It was not forged for parlor tricks or schoolyard competitions."

I leaned back, studying her. "Go on."

"In the Old World," Narcissa said, "there were rites. Rituals of winnowing. Potential champions would be pitted against each other — not merely to prove strength or skill, but to refine their souls. Each trial burned away weakness. Each death was a prayer. Each survivor an offering."

She rose smoothly, moving like a silk blade across the floor.

"The last standing — the true Champion — was given a boon. Not gold. Not fleeting fame. Power. Divine favor from forces far beyond mortal magic. The Triwizard Tournament, Harry, smells of these rites. Bowdlerized, yes. Sanitized for your modern Hogwarts sensibilities. But at its bones?" She smiled thinly. "It is the same beast."

A long silence stretched.

“Eternal Glory,” I murmured. “That’s what the Triwizard is about. Eternal fucking glory!”

The air felt heavier.Like the shadows around the room leaned in to listen.

"And you think Voldemort knew this?" Hermione asked.

Narcissa tilted her head. "I think if someone like the Dark Lord decided to lay low for an entire year for the tournament to finish, he did it for a reason. I think he intended to hijack the original purpose. To steal the culmination of that ancient magic — for himself. But..." She waved one hand languidly. "His plans were crude. The mechanism may have been awakening... but it lacks the wisdom to finish the invocation. And the Dark Lord is never lacking in wisdom."

She looked at me then — really looked — and I felt it like a blade sliding between the ribs.

"You were part of the ritual," she said softly. "Or, you will be. And you have no idea what it was supposed to do."

I smiled tightly. "Story of my life."

“Or,” Hestia spoke out for the first time. “Maybe Harry is right, and it’s simply an overcomplicated plan made by two madmen.”

“Your blinding faith is disgusting, Jones,” said Narcissa, looking like Hestia had just vivisected a pig on the dinner table, and I suppressed the urge to laugh. As my Lilim, her devotion to me was just as adhering as Hestia, albeit in a different way. But where the latter would follow my word without question, Narcissa would challenge me, just to ensure that I wasn’t acting in ignorance.

“No, Hestia….” I said slowly. “She… might just be right about that.”

“And how can you say that?” Hestia demanded.

Narcissa just preened.

“Because the Goblet of Fire isn’t just a sorting artifact. It’s alive.”

Hestia blinked. “Alive how?”

“Sentient,” I said. “Malevolent. Twisted. Just by being in the Great Hall, it is reprogramming people’s emotions to favor chaos, ambition, desperation… the urge to prove oneself and take down potential opponents. Makes me wonder if it’s selecting not the best champions, but the most… exploitable.”

A heavy silence followed.

“If you are insinuating….” began Amelia.

“That the recent uprising and chaos at Hogwarts is because of the Goblet? Partly. I am guessing that they had at least some of that feeling latent in their system. The goblet merely… unleashed it.”

“And you know this how?” Anastasia asked.

“Something that I’d like to talk about at length later on,” I said. “For now, just take my word for it.”

All of them looked like they had more questions, but decided to drop it at his word.

Hermione massaged her temples. “Why in blazes would anyone consider using such a thing to judge a tournament?”

Every eye turned towards Amelia.

“Don’t give me that look,” she said defensively. “Even at this stage, I’m being denied any details concerning the goblet under the guise of ‘impartiality’. Apparently they cannot trust the Director of the DMLE with the Goblet’s history and enchantments, because she’s the Potter Regent.”

“What about confidentiality oaths?” asked Anastasia. 

“They are preferring to go ahead with a team of hit-wizards, under supervision of a Senior Auror to lead the security of the tournament. They even suggested Gawain Robards for this role, with Alastor Moody stepping in as consultant. And of course, all members would have to go through special oaths that would prevent them from demonstrating any bias towards any Champion of any school.” 

“Why Robards?” I asked, remembering my own experience with the Auror earlier during the Summer holidays.

“Because despite all his talents, his natural facility at deduction, and his spell repertoire, Robards utterly lacks ambition in any sense.”

“Lacks ambition?” I sputtered. “He’s a senior Auror!”

“Chief Auror,” Amelia corrected. “After I lost Rufus and Kinglsey, he was the only one that could hold the reins. But make no mistake, Harry. The only reason he’s where he is, is simply because he outclassed every other Auror of his rank with sheer competence. He was continually promoted into higher-ranking positions he did not want because there was no one else half as good as him. But even then, he made things difficult for him — maybe even intentionally perhaps — by being blunt towards politicians to the point of being abrasive. Had I not forcibly promoted him, Robards would probably still be doing ground-work.”

“Wait, then why propose his name?” asked Emmeline.

“Because much like Dumbledore, Robards too believes you have something fishy going on with you. The events of Summer have only made things worse. Gawain has been utterly dissatisfied at the haphazard way the Quidditch World Cup affair was handled, and he is most likely going to be sniffing around for clues.”

“This is beginning to feel more and more like a trap for Harry,” said Hermione sourly. “It’s like they want to admit whatever he was up to during the Quidditch World Cup.”

“Somehow, I don’t think that’s true,” said Emmeline. At everyone’s look of surprise, she raised a brow. “What? You don’t need to be a genius to know that making Harry look bad would be a PR nightmare for the nation right now. If they even insinuate that Harry had something to do with the destruction at the World Cup, it would destroy all hope that the other nations have on our government. Cornelius Fudge would rather eat his bowler hat than let that happen!”

“What are you suggesting?” asked Hestia. “That we just hold hands and do nothing?”

“She’s saying that instead of worrying about Dumbledore’s plans, we should go ahead with our own,” I voiced out loud. “I think we’ve already established that things are different this time around than what I remember, either because I was too magically stunted to realize them, or because whatever changes my actions have caused the timeline. So, if Narcissa is correct, and the Triwizard is truly a massive ritual in place, the obvious question is —”

“What was the real reason behind the tournament’s resurrection,” said Hestia. “And why exactly was the Goblet of Fire used to serve as judge?”