Chapter. 22.1- Doom Days

I tried to make a show of stretching as I stood at the edge of the quidditch pitch. It had once again been transformed, but this time into a massive duelling platform for the Triwizard duels. Duels that were surprisingly still going to be taking place considering what had happened last night. Fleur was standing next to me, and even though we were competitors in the competition, it seemed to matter little to her right now. She just wanted someone by her side. Last night, during the Tragedy of the Yule Ball as the Daily Prophet called it, Pierre Delacour had died, falling to a killing curse from a mercenary polyjuiced as a durmstrang student. He hadn’t been the only one to die though.

Nemo Kawaguchi, the Princess of Japan, and the ostensible target of the attack had perished as well. So had Emile Sukovsky of Germany. Several Hogwarts students had been injured or killed in the ensuing stampede, including one Neville Longbottom who had been trampled while escorting his date to safety. It was a dark day for the wizarding world, made even darker by the fact that this farce of a contest would be continuing onwards.

Multiple people had died, but the dead careers were perhaps equally worthy of mention. Dumbledore was going to have a hard time escaping this one. Barty Crouch had infiltrated the school with the aid of polyjuice and shown the world that it was possible. Somehow, the old man had done nothing to prevent it from happening again. Karkarov was another who would be dealing with enormous backlash. His students had been replaced in enormous numbers- and killed before the ball even began. The mercenaries, or freedom fighters would be a better word because I remember what I heard that night had succeeded. One of them had even replaced Diggory.

Luckily he was still alive and had merely been shoved in a broom closet. Somehow they knew that the Castle’s wards would have informed Dumbledore of the death of a registered Hogwarts student but not of the deaths of the Durmstrang students. Fudge was another one who hadn’t come out of this wholly intact. Several people had seen him crawl along the floor to hide behind Dumbledore once the chaos began. Enough students were dead that parents were out for blood. Still it was early days and there was chaos to still be had.

“The first duel will be between Victor Krum and Fleur Delacour” Bagman announced. Even he wasn’t trying to make this any more exciting than it should have been. Continuing this to try to drown the news was the most foolish thing Fudge could have done. Surely he had some competent advisors on his side. Of course he didn’t, I thought to myself with a snort as Umbridge came to mind.

“You’ve got this” I whispered to Fleur as I squeezed her hand. None of the foreign leaders apart from Karpov had remained in Hogwarts, citing security concerns. Several purebloods had been withdrawn during breakfast even- a surprisingly sober Draco Malfoy among them.

A/N: The fallout? Immense. Are you going “wtf?” Right now, well, that’s what happens when you see everything through the lens of a self-obsessed MC. I’ll provide a lot of context through this chapter and the next few. To put it simply, we’re going to have a more complex story than you might have expected