Chapter 6

Hey everyone, sorry to get anyone excited, but if it wasn't obvious, I'm discontinuing this story. There are a number of things I just can't stand about it, several of them in this chapter, which I decided to post largely thanks to HowInMadHowie asking about any continuation to the story.

This is the unfinished final chapter, with all my notes and thoughts on future ideas sprinkled throughout. If anyone wants to use any ideas or concepts from the story in their own writing, feel free, I don't mind.

To Joe Lawyer, I'm sorry for giving up on this, and I appreciated every bit of help you gave me with writing this story, your ideas helped with a lot of its development.

-oops note, Cedric should only be fifteen here? oh well

-cedric, tonks, and john are 6th years in this year

-moros creates a technological equivalent to a wand and adds it to the wrist band, harry uses this to perform transfiguration with ease, using his will and his imagination

-drones have space folding ability based on apparition, allows them to close in on target without warning

-space folding for tactical moves in battles, instant repositioning of ships in different formations

-instant communication between linked journals is based on the fabric of the universe itself, impossible to block or jam, as the signal is everywhere at once, this is used for relaying orders to ships- the more ships in a fleet, the greater their accuracy and sensor range.

-solar reactor compresses a sun into a pocket dimension within a ship, can use time compression to affect amount of power generated

Magic is the remnants of the will of the first people to ascend, the same people who sent out the message that led to the journey of Destiny in SGU. Harry learns about this from Ganos Lai, one of the few 'moderate' ascended who was once a friend and /or lover/companion of moros

June 1 1993

The interrogation of Pettigrew was short.

Sweet, not so much.

Under the influence of veritaserum he admitted to framing Sirius Black for the deaths of twelve muggles and himself; crimes that had his once friend imprisoned for over a decade.

To Amelia this situation was beyond galling, even more so than the situation with the Weasley Girl. She felt for Ginny Weasley, having lost members of her own family to cursed artefacts during the war with He-who-must-not-be-named. However, punishing an innocent man to suffer Azkaban for so long was by far a worse punishment than house arrest and loss of wand privileges.

The problem was the...stickiness of the situation. She knew Fudge had been one of the first to arrive on the scene after Pettigrew had faked his death, and that Black's grief-maddened laughter had cemented his opinion that the man was completely insane. And that was without accounting for Lucius Malfoy's influence over the Minister.

She was not blind to the numerous meetings the two men had behind closed doors. Fudge was a horrible actor, and as such it was nearly an open secret that Fudge was in Lucius Malfoy's pocket. Unfortunately few people within the ministry had the power to do anything about it and most that did were on either Malfoy's or Fudge's side of the matter.

To add to this Malfoy's son Draco was set to inherit the Black family vaults should Sirius either die or remain imprisoned. As such Lucius had a vested interest in keeping Sirius Black out of the line of succession , either through continuing his imprisonment or assassination. And though she had no definite proof, she knew that either was likely if she was not careful with masking her movements.

So this was why she and a small escort of her most trusted Aurors were making the trip to Azkaban themselves.

The island was warded against all known kinds of magical transportation, incoming or not, so she and her Aurors braved the miserable weather that was so prevalent around the prison with nothing but a cramped boat and warming charms.

She was met at the gates by a grim faced head warden, and silently handed over her head auror badge for inspection. Though the man seemed vaguely surprised at her visit, he said nothing of it, only heading back into his office before returning with a pouch of anti-dementor amulets. Very few wizards and witches could cast a proper patronus, herself not included, so the amulets were a necessity for those that worked in the prison.

Amelia let out a small sigh of relief as the amulet pushed away the darkness encroaching on her mind. Even far away from the highest concentration of the dementors, the aura of gloom and despair they projected over the island had been felt since she arrived.

"I will need an escort to Sirius Black's cell." She stated, gesturing to her men.

Warden McAuffie simply scrutinized her for a moment before complying with her request, silent as the monsters that guarded this prison.

Amelia reflexively shivered. All who worked in the Auror Corps knew that Azkaban changed the happiest of people over time, even with the protective amulets. Postings here were always seen as a punishment, and an effective one considering no officer would want to repeat their offenses. The warden had been here for decades, and though she had not known him when he was younger, his mannerisms were eerily similar to the creatures that guarded this prison.

The walk to Black's cell was accompanied only by the sounds of their robes and heavy footsteps, the mental gloom of the prison suffocating the desire for speech. The only human sounds were the moans and screams of the prisoners themselves, bereft of any protection from the dementor's effects.

She repressed another shiver as they moved into the higher security wards of the prison. It was a bit of a misnomer, as the layout of the prison was the same, only with higher concentrations of the foul demons to reduce the likelihood of the prisoners keeping their minds.

"Well well, lookee what we've got here boys, ickle Aurors coming to visit us, how nice of 'em!"

Amelia resolutely did not look in the direction of that voice, one that was arguably responsible for the most deaths during the blood war save for He-who-must-not-be-named himself. Bellatrix Lestrange.

As if her strident voice was a signal, the other death eaters inhabiting the cells perked up and began cursing the aurors with zealous fervour. And that was what these people were; zealots following the ideals of a past age.

The only one silent was the man she had come to free, looking at her with eyes that protruded from the sallow skin of his face.

Amelia gestured toward her aurors, who nodded while setting up a silencing barrier to keep their conversation private.

"Sirius Black?" She asked once given the all-clear.

The skeleton of a man gave her a flirtatious smirk. "That depends on why you're asking."

Against her will Amelia felt a small smile tug at her lips. Black still had some of his charm then, a surprise. She was expecting him to be little more than a maddened maniac like the rest of the death eaters here.

"I am here because we have captured Peter Pett-"

Immediately, the man's expression turned near feral, eyes bulging from his sallow skull. "The traitor! Where is he?"

Amelia mused on the man's suddenly deranged appearance. Perhaps he hadn't escaped the rigors of Azkaban after all.

It was a shame, he had been one of the DMLE's finest before his imprisonment.

"He was found at Hogwarts, and is currently held in the secure DMLE cells, only I or my second in command can access them." She tried to placate him, though going by his expression it wasn't nearly enough information for him.

She held up a hand, stalling more questions. "Black, I need you to listen to me! I came here without knowledge of the minister or the Wizengamot because i don't know if they will want to admit that you didn't get a trial."

Sirius knew how to be serious when the situation called for it. "You think that someone will want me to disappear before I'm declared innocent."

Amelia nodded sharply. "That you were the only suspected death eater I know of not given a trial before imprisonment makes me suspicious. Even those prisoners here with you were granted at least that much."

Sirius nodded solemnly in return. "So how are we going to do this Amelia?"

Again she felt a smile cross her face. How forward of him. "You'll be coming with me, I'll have to work with Dumbledore to get you a trial as soon as possible, but until then you'll be living under house arrest in Bones Hall while we get you looking presentable."

Sirius looked at her, a coy smirk forming on his face. "How generous of you Amelia, I'll try not to take advantage of your hospitality."

One of Amelia's Aurors let out a suspicious cough while the others suddenly blanked their faces. Amelia forced down the pink that wanted to show on her cheeks.

"Be careful Black. Bones Hall still has a number of cells waiting to be used again." She stated primly, ignoring the salacious waggling of Black's eyebrows.

"I'll be on my best behavior." Sirius Black promised, an overly innocent look on his face.

Amelia sighed and gestured to her Aurors to open the door. "Somehow I'm having trouble believing that."

June 5th

Hogwarts

True to his word, the headmaster found another way for Harry to learn potions. By taking lessons from the previous potions master of the school, Horace Slughorn.

The man had an ability to explain the intricacies of potions light years beyond that of what Snape had given even to his Slytherins. It was unfortunate that the man did not want to come to Hogwarts in person, so they had settled for a method of long distance learning using an out of the way classroom and two-way mirrors every saturday.

The mirrors were a fascinating invention, similar to the linked journals Harry had seen advertised in Flourish and Blotts in that communication between them was instant no matter the distance.

Harry had even purchased a few to test this theory, and placed one of the journals on the moon. Another was placed in Siberia, and the third, or master was kept with him. Moros had been astonished that there was no difference at all in the time it took for the moon journal to receive a message in comparison to the Siberia journal. Even Hyperspace messages had a measurable delay across that difference, though it was so small as to be completely negligible.

"Good Harry, now slowly juice the leeches and add them one standard vial at a time." Slughorn cautioned, watching his student working over a standard cauldron in an attempt to produce a shrinking solution.

Harry nodded, careful to stir exactly three times before adding each new vial.

"Good, good; now add the rat spleen, the potion should change to a dark green color." The potions master advised.

Harry nodded and did so, a proud smile on his face as the potion remained the correct color and texture.

A faint smell of wood-smoke grabbed his attention from the open window. He chanced a look up from the simmering potion, only to quickly stand up from the desk.

"Sorry professor-" He apologized before removing the potion from the fire and sprinting out of the room. He was sure the man would forgive him for helping someone whose house was on fire.

After a moment of indecision on whether to grab a professor he decided against it. It was already likely that one of the students outside would have noticed the fire and ran for the professors. Still, it could take some time for the students to find one, and by that point it might be too late for the gentle gamekeeper.

After two long minutes of weaving through students he made it outside, taking slow breaths to maximize his air intake.

He arrived to see Hagrid standing outside of his hut, trying to coax something inside of the burning home out. Harry was dumbfounded to see what looked like a young dragon, black and angular, curled up on the hand-woven rug that was even now smoking.

He drew his wand, before directing the band around his arm to remove all oxygen from the hut except from a small bubble around the dragon's head. After only a moment, the fires were extinguished, and he let out a low sigh of relief.

"Thanks Harry." The half-giant rumbled at him. He looked forlornly at the steaming remains of his umbrella.

The dragon hissed in displeasure as the fire was snuffed out, a spark of flame in its mouth, before Harry jerked his wand forward and a spray of water came forth, soaking its head.

The dragonet yowled loudly this time, but before it could do anything Hagrid swooped in and grabbed it, gathering it into his arms much like a domestic cat.

Harry opened his mouth, closed it and shook his head. Of course Hagrid would see a voracious fire-breathing reptile that way.

It was only another minute before the headmaster appeared, sprinting down the grassy hill. Harry found himself impressed at the man's speed, as if he were a third his age. The headmaster looked between Harry, Hagrid, and the dragonet curled up in his arms before taking a deep breath.

"Oh dear." He sighed before giving Harry a glance. "My thanks to you for extinguishing the fire Mr. Potter, i will take care of the situation from here."

Not having any reason to stay, Harry nodded, wondering where Hagrid was going to live over the summer break.

-Harry is disappointed to learn that most known wizarding potions are meant to be used on organic targets. There are none, at least that Slughorn knows of, that are meant to be used in metallurgy, though the goblins may have some if rumour is to be believed

June 11th

The Unspeakables were not named so on a whim. They were responsible for both studying and sealing unknown and dangerous magical artifacts throughout the breadth of the British Isles, and as such were largely autonomous from the ministry, even having additional income from the magical patents on some of the safer research.

However, Their latest acquisition, found possessing a student of all things had them in a fervor not seen since the defeat of He-who-must-not-be-named.

In a word, the diary was vile. Corrupted magicks seeped from the thing in streams invisible to the naked eye, but more than visible to the specialized tools used in their profession.

"This diary was created using an unwilling sacrifice." One of the figures rumbled, their voice unmistakably male even under the voice and identity obscuring charms.

"Female, and definitely before the age of majority." Another said, eying the artifact with a wrinkled nose. Human sacrifice was an element of dark magic since the beginning of recorded history, but only the blackest arts relied on the sacrifice of innocents.

"It is covered in compulsion and trust-me charms, that Weasley girl didn't stand a chance." A third agent grimaced.

A fourth unspeakable was busy holding an enchanted mithril disk over the diary, frowning heavily before their eyes widened in realization and nausea. Quickly conjuring a bucket, they emptied their stomach noisily, drawing attention from their compatriots.

"Agent Dragon?" Phoenix, their group leader asked, a hint of worry in their tone.

Dragon shuddered, drawing in a shaky breath. "It's a horcrux."

Suddenly Phoenix could understand the agent's reaction, feeling their own stomach rebelling at the thought of such a vile perversion of magic.

The others around them reacted in various ways, one of the few muggleborn that made it into the Department of Mysteries crossing themselves while others took involuntary steps back from the artefact muttering prayers to their own deities and ancestors. However none of them reacted as severely as Dragon, the most magically sensitive of all of them, who had been using a tool that amplified that sensitivity tenfold.

After a moment to calm their nerves, Phoenix sent a message to Director Croaker. They would need his authorization to search through the core samples that their department kept on every magical within the United Kingdom. Whoever committed this obscenity against magic would need to be hunted down and removed; for the good of all.

June 25th

Harry woke up slowly, taking the luxury of a lay in for at least a few moments.

Then he frowned as he realized he could not feel his mentor in his own room across the hall, but instead in the same room he had been working in last night. Moros must have been working through the night on his special project, though he had neglected to inform him just what he had been doing. And trying to pry into his mind with telepathy would be useless against someone of his experience.

With a sigh at his mentor's obsessive habits, Harry pulled himself out of bed while mentally sending a query to the Tor's computer for two standard breakfast meals. He doubted that Moros had even thought of eating when he was this engrossed in a project.

Moros was looking decidedly disheveled when Harry came in levitating both of the breakfast trays. But it was the sight of a miniaturized Aurora-class pulse weapon that made Harry stop in his tracks. What the hell was his father doing with such a powerful weapon in their home?

"Good morning Patram." Harry said, eyeing the weapon as if it were about to bite him. "What exactly are you going to do with that?"

Moros smiled, eyes near glittering in anticipation, along with a tinge of mania. "I believe that I have found a way to replicate the effect of your magic."

Well, that was certainly a bombshell.

Harry spluttered, quickly settling the breakfast trays on one of the relatively clear worktables before he lost his concentration and dropped them.

"I thought you said that you had yet to find the link between the energy being manipulated and the mental signal?"

Moros looked a step away from deranged laughter, and Harry fought the urge to step back. "Well, I have found it." He gestured, and a copy of the same band Harry wore around his wrist projected an neural map. After a second, Harry realized this was one of the scans of his brain while Moros had him casting magic.

"As you know, the wizards have extremely high activity in the right sides of their brains, though to compensate, their left side seems, on average, to be lower than that of baseline humans." Harry gave Moros an annoyed look at the not so subtle dig. The man had been nearly raving at what he called "a complete absence of common sense in the average wizard " after the travesty of Ginny Weasley's trial.

"However, for the longest time I was trying to find the method of control over your magic through logic and reason, both controlled by the left side of the brain. This breakthrough only came when I followed my belief that something had to be causing the increased activity in the right, and there it was."

The image moved to an image of the base of the brain, where if Harry squinted, he could see a small highlighted section right above the pituitary gland.

"This is the same region present in all Lanteans, which gives us control over our advanced mental abilities. "However, in magicals, this region has far more connections to the right side of the brain than in Lanteans, which are more or less balanced."

"Creativity and belief." Harry stated, realizing where Moros was going with this. The reason their attempts at replicating magic through machines had failed was because there was no belief in the energy manipulating itself, only logical steps to recreate it. Though he did not understand how manipulating a form of energy required belief to work, he could put aside that confusion if belief would succeed where logic did not.

At least for now.

"So how do we get around the issue of a machine not being capable of belief?" Harry asked.

Moros smiled, opening a small compartment at the base of the pulse weapon. "By adding biological components capable of expressing those mental signals."

Harry stared at the condensed strands of synthetic neural tissue. He wouldn't have thought Merlin would turn to organic technology, given the stigma over it being more of a specialty for their enemies the Wraith.. "Have you tested it yet?"

Moros shook his head. "I just finished creating a program that will translate our instructions in machine code to biological impulses through the organic core. If you would like to attempt it?"

Harry nodded eagerly, putting aside his own unease over there being organic material in the machine and following Moros to the command interface.

A thick slab of naquada-trinium metal was set up as a target, and he aimed at it while searching through the database for a good spell. After choosing the stunning spell, he then noted there was an amplification option from baseline human to a hundred times the mental strength of a human. To be safe he kept it at baseline and activated the machine.

With a low hum, the modified pulse weapon powered up, and Harry could see through the monitor as a signal was passed through the organic core, which then corresponded with the energy reservoir. An instant later, and a bolt of red energy flew from the pulse weapon and struck the center of the target and fizzling out.

Harry's eyes widened. It was working!

Moros smiled happily, visibly restraining himself from celebrating. "Now test something more destructive, we need to test the variability of the machine."

Harry nodded despite a bit of apprehension, selecting the reductor curse this time, only increasing its power by a factor of ten.

The reductor curse worked by creating and exploiting faults and gaps in a material, overloading them with kinetic energy and thus blasting them apart into chunks, or with enough power, fine particles. Of course, that wasn't the theory taught in Hogwarts, but it seemed few wizards had even heard of the most basic of particle physics.

The whine of the machine powering up was louder this time, and a bright blue bolt of energy struck the target metal, a massive exothermic reaction blinding them for a moment. Harry's eyebrows rose as the naquada-trinium hull had been reduced to about a fifth of its prior thickness, the remainder vaporized.

"Well." Moros said, eyes blinking as he tried to remove the spots from them. "It appears that it works quite well."

Harry wet his lips nervously. Understatement of the year.

Moros' bio-machine set a fire under them both, and the next few weeks of the summer passed in a frenzy of experimentation with the modified pulse emitter, or MPE. Moros was especially focused into giving permanent magical effects through saturating the Lantean hull with different frequencies of energy, though they were having trouble keeping the energy in place, as it tended to dissipate over time .

After several days of frustrating results, Harry looked into the Potter journals and found a treatise on methods of enchanting. It was then he realized that all enchantments needed to be anchored into an object in some way, else magical energy would not remain in them.

All enchantments fed off some sort of energy reservoir inherent in their design, so all they needed to do was create a series of advanced emitters within the hull segment which would continually supply the energy field. Once the appropriate energy dissipation field had been selected, they tested the MPW on the improved hull, and only the sensors they had recording were able to notice any difference in the hull once they fired. The energy fired from the MPW had been in the form of a reducto, and once striking the hull had simply been converted into energy that was stored within arrays of capacitors deeper within the hull.

Theoretically, if placed on a ship, these hull plates would only be able to hold so much energy before overloading. Which was why Moros had thought of creating conductive plates as an under-layer to the armor. These plates would take the energy from the capacitors and then add them to a massive shipboard capacitor. This capacitor could then use the excess energy to reinforce key systems across a ship, including weapons.

Of course, this would only happen if the ship's shields were down, and it took an incredible amount of punishment from multiple Wraith Hives to overload Lantean shield systems. Harry was already thinking of designing their own ships with these new additions, because even Moros had to admit that the Aurora class ships had been mainly designed for exploration and survey, not continued combat like they had been used for in the Wraith war.

No, whenever they started their new ship design, its shield systems would be far more robust than the Aurora class. Redundancy was the key, not pure strength of one system over another.

-later create a shield system that works with the armor, reducing the potency of an incoming attack with a negligible drain to shields and allowing it to spread damage across said armor

-maybe can send the excess energy directly into the weapons systems to increase their power without needing to use their own reactors, or even in conjunction with them.

Harry put down the copy of Ender's game suggested to him by Hermione with a thoughtful noise. Though the technology displayed in the story was nothing compared to that of the Lanteans,(With the exception of the Ansible and the MD device) how war was fought was completely different to what he had learned about the Wraith war.

In Ender's game, many of the battles that Ender fought were based on positioning and movement rather than strength of forces. A small force in the right place could make all the difference between victory and defeat, instead of simply keeping to two sides of a battlefield and pounding at the enemy force.

In comparison most of the space battles fought against the Wraith had Lantean ships acting as if they were slowly moving fortresses, not mobile attackers. It just showed how much time had affected the Lanteans, that a once cunning warrior people became a more peaceful, undisciplined society.

Arrogance was a curse, plain and simple. The Lanteans believed themselves superior to every other race they knew of, and saw no need to explore the realm of war when their ships could take everything any prospective enemy could throw at them. This only lasted until they discovered the Wraith, and by the time they realized their military deficiency it was too late to do anything but abandon the Pegasus galaxy.

It was Moros' dream to resurrect the Lantean way of life in the Milky Way galaxy. if not its culture, then at least the ability to protect the less advanced races from afar with their advanced technology. But to do that, Harry knew that they needed to be able to fight off threats more powerful than they were at the height of their power.

And what better way to learn to fight than to study the thousands of years of war doctrine developed here on Earth, both imagined and real?

Harry closed the book gently, before connecting his mind to the transportation computer of the Tor. The London Library would likely have plenty more sources on military tactics throughout the ages.

-takes the idea of ansible and looks for magic that has true instant communication, instead of merely very high speed

In an effort to find more applications for what they were learning, Harry had sent several letters to Hermione asking about good science fiction books. Her father was a devout sci-fi enthusiast, as he had learned from her last year, and the few bookstores he had been in were unhelpful to his search for good ideas.

-ansible idea taken further, with every ship in a fleet having access to every other ship's sensor information, makes it so they can respond even faster to any threat

September 1

Joshua watched in nervous tension, butterflies in his stomach as the train came to a stop in hogsmeade station.

After Wool's orphanage had been demolished two years ago, he and the other orphans had been spread across other British orphanages, meaning that the few friends he had made while living there were now far away.

The last thing he had been expecting was to have a visit from a stern looking woma-witch, they called them witches here, who told him that he was capable of using magic.

When she came he was so happy to learn that there was something else he could be, could do, other than being that weird orphan boy that no-one really wanted to do with.

Learning that the strange accidents he had when he was younger were in fact caused by his magic made him both resentful and grateful. Resentful that they waited until he was eleven to tell him these things, but grateful that they had accepted him to this school all the same.

He desperately hoped that this would be somewhere he could belong.

The platform at Hogsmeade was beyond crowded, a thick mass of milling students in their black uniforms. The uneven cobblestones made walking in the dark mass a little tricky, but he managed, trying to move away from the center of the crowd.

Joshua paused, heart pounding in shock as a face that had haunted him in his dreams passed by him, talking animatedly with a blond-haired boy and bushy-haired girl. What was going on? He had seen that boy disappear into thin air four years ago!

He was distracted as he heard a booming voice calling for all first years. He took a glance at the giant of a man holding a lantern before returning his gaze to the disappearing boy. The boy who had been the first to ever give him something without expecting anything in return.

But he was already gone, and disappointed, Joshua joined up with the rest of the first years. He needed to find out what happened to that boy, and to get his name.

The journey up to the castle seemed glacially slow and inhumanly fast at the same time. There was so much to see, the stone walls, the flickering torches spaced evenly across the path. It was like he was in the middle of a medieval movie.

But inside it was even more strange, with the moving portraits all over the walls.

The shrieks of some of the girls made him whirl around, only to goggle at the transparent people that just came through the wall, floating. At this point he couldn't discount anything when it came to magic, otherwise he would just continue being shocked.

Even with this resolution, it was hard not to be impressed with the spectacle of the Great Hall, filled with floating candles that seemed to move up and down hypnotically.

He looked once again for that boy, ignoring the other first years chattering around him. Eventually he spotted him in the table filled with all the other students in yellow-trimmed robes, talking politely with several of his neighbors.

The strict witch, Professor Mc...Conagal was it? He couldn't remember; laid a dirty looking hat on a stool then stepped away, leaving the majority of the first years to give it bewildered looks.

Joshua's eyes flitted around the room, noting how the other students sitting at their tables had quietened as soon as the professor set down the hat. They were all watching it intensely, and Joshua was startled when the hat moved, part of it opening like a mouth.

And then it began to sing.

He had only been here a few minutes and he was starting to get a headache. A singing hat? What was this a disney movie?

And as suddenly as it began the hat silenced, leaving the professor, now holding a list in her hand, to stand by the stool.

"When I call your name, you will come forward and put on the Sorting Hat. It will decide which house you will be sorted into for the entirety of your time here at Hogwarts."

She paused to take a breath. "Your house is like your family at Hogwarts. Treat your fellow students with respect and dignity, and you will be treated with respect in kind. With that being said let us begin the Sorting. "

"Samantha Anders."

Joshua watched as a rather willowy young girl stepped forward nervously, coming to sit on the stool.

The professor placed the hat on her head, and only five seconds later it said "Ravenclaw!"

The table in blue in red started clapping, and Samantha moved to join them, the previously blank trim on her robes now blue and bronze.

"Fenex Atkinson!"

Joshua waited impatiently, knowing that he would be one of the last to be sorted with his last name.

Finally, as the line of first years grew thin and the students at the tables began to look irritated from hunger, his name was called.

"Joshua Taylor!"

He moved out of the line nervously, trying to ignore the stares of the countless students in their seats. The path to the hat seemed to stretch on forever, but he managed to get there, shakily climbing onto the stool.

The hat was lowered onto his head, and immediately a voice sounded in his mind.

"Hmm, an interesting one, so much fascination for young Mr. Potter in your head, but not for the usual reasons."

Joshua tensed, not liking the tone the hat took, or understanding what it meant by 'usual reasons'.

"You've had an uncomfortable life, and struggle with creating emotional connections with others because you are afraid that you will not be able to maintain those connections with them." The hat said almost sadly, then stopped.

"No real ambition other than living well, though with your background I can see why. But you do understand the meaning of hard work, even if it didn't always seem to pay off. Better be HUFFLEPUFF! "

It took Joshua a moment to realize that the hat had spoken the last part of that aloud and he quickly took it off, taking several quick steps to his new house table as they cheered.

"Can I sit here?" A timid voice asked. Harry turned from where he was chatting to Cedric about the latest articles posted from the Wizarding Continental Times, blinking at the firsty in front of him.

He arched an eyebrow at Cedric, who shrugged and moved over slightly while Harry did the same in the other direction, allowing Joshua to squeeze in. "Sure, Joshua was it?"

Harry was somewhat surprised that one of the first years wanted to sit next to him, usually they wanted to sit next to one of the students their own age.

"Yeah, I wanted to talk to you." Joshua's eyes narrowed as a low snort came from his right.

"Cedric!" Harry hissed in reprimand.

"Sorry Harry, but everyone would love to 'talk' to you." Cedric snickered, making air-quotes with his fingers .

Harry looked decidedly grumpy. "Yes well thankfully most have better sense than to try and fawn over me after the first few times." The cold stare he had given those that dared had been quite persuasive.

Joshua's head moved back and forth between the two, looking confused. "Why does everyone want to talk to you? Are you famous or something?"

The looks of sheer incredulity he received from those sitting across from them made him shrink back in embarrassment.

Harry's lips twitched slightly. So for once it wasn't some fangirl or fanboy who wanted to try and talk to him? "You could say I'm somewhat famous."

Cedric snorted again. "Somewhat famous he says." earning himself another dirty look.

Harry rolled his eyes. "Ignore him Joshua, Cedric is very easy to entertain."

Cedric made a mock affronted noise to Harry, only to stop when the food appeared on their plates. "Finally!"

Joshua jerked back as the platters on the table were suddenly filled with food. "What-"

Harry smiled. "You'll get used to it, startled me too when I had my first feast here."

"Right…" Joshua muttered, reaching over and serving himself some of the bangers and mash.

Harry waited a bit until the firsty had served himself. "So why did you want to talk to me if you didn't know about the whole boy-who-lived nonsense?"

"Boy-who…." Joshua noticed that he was getting those same looks again and was getting tired of it. "What?"

Harry gave Ernie and Justin a pointed look and cast a minor silencing ward around the two of them. "Ignore them for now Joshua, I'm sure you'll be told all about it soon enough." He rolled his eyes.

"...Did you just do some magic?" Joshua asked excitedly. It was weird, everything around them was blurry and muted.

Harry nodded, smiling faintly. "A spell that prevents others from listening to what we are saying. I was getting tired of them interrupting." He gave the younger boy an expectant look.

"Right, so..I wanted to ask you…."

Harry looked at him expectantly.

"Sorry...um...what happened to you?"

Harry's brows furrowed. "I'm not sure what you mean."

"On that field trip to the tower! You just walked in and disappeared, and no-one even noticed!"

Harry stilled completely, glad he had put up the silencing ward. He examined the boy in front of him more closely. The face was vaguely familiar, but...no...was it?

"You're the boy I gave my sandwich to." He said slowly, as if in disbelief. "Small world."

He frowned, wondering what to say. Glastonbury Tor was his greatest secret, and yet here was someone that knew there was something suspicious about it. The last thing he needed was for someone to discover where he lived, the wizards would be all over his home before you could say Merlin!

"I-we'll need to talk about this later Joshua." He said, looking at the younger boy with all the seriousness he could muster. "Do not tell anyone about this, please."

Joshua, though confused nodded, not wanting to force it right now.

"Thank you." Harry said, before making another gesture with his wand and removing the silencing barrier.

"What was that about?" Cedric asked.

"Oh, he recognized me from muggle primary school, and it took me a bit to remember him as well." Harry said airily. Joshua tried to not give away his disbelief, instead digging into his food.

Cedric gave him a look before shaking his head minutely. Harry was a horrible liar, but he didn't do it unless he felt very uncomfortable about the subject. He would have to ask him later in a more private setting and see if Harry opened up then.

Hufflepuff dorms

Harry lay in his bed, unable to fall asleep.

Learning about Joshua, the boy he had almost completely forgotten about when faced with everything else that had happened at glastonbury tor that day had Harry reeling for several reasons.

The first was that the boy had also been able to sense something about Glastonbury Tor, and that he had seen Harry disappear into thin air when none of the other visitors had seemed to be aware.

However the level of gratitude the boy had for him that made him feel more than a little awkward, given the short time they had known each other.

Apparently, Joshua was an orphan, had been ever since he was four and his magic saved him from being crushed in the car accident that killed his parents. A cruel irony that the lie told to him about his parent's death had actually been true in Joshua's case.

The younger boy had been practically alone his entire life, the strange incidents caused by his accidental magic made the few foster families that deigned to take him in afraid, and then he was shuffled off to a new 'home' once again, breaking off any attachments he managed to create.

As sad as it was, Harry deciding to share his sandwich with Joshua made him one of the few people that cared enough to help him without anything in return, and it left a rather lasting impression.

There was also another problem to consider. When he had first entered the tower, Moros had told him that only those with a certain outlook and ability would be able to notice anything off about his tower. Joshua had been considered a good choice if he was able to see it, but as Harry had been closer, he had been the first to be taken in, and scared Joshua away.

He had already sent a message to Moros about the strange coincidence, though he had yet to hear a response. Hopefully Moros would be able to do something about Joshua's living situation.

-Harry also asks the basilisk if they can take readings of the magical energies of her death stare while he is at school, which they discover through ancient files in the ministry of magic (scanned in by the probes) that the killing curse is based on the stare of a basilisk, which means that if they can counter her magic, then they might be able to do the same with the killing curse.

-They learn that something that looks in her eyes has all of its cell activity frozen in an instant, the heart, the brain, every organ fails instantly. And most organic armors conduct the curse, very few wizards use metallic armor both for its cost and the danger that comes from having pieces of it shatter when hit with spells, and no energy shield has been able to block the curse, as it simply pierces straight through a shield. The only way to block it is with isolated materials not connected to the one being targeted, or hit it with a targeted pulse of energy that dispels it in midair, they learn how to create a nullifying wave through study of the basilisk stare, but do not have it to test on the killing curse.

September 31

Goblet of Fire scene

Harry watched on with the rest of his house as the Goblet of Fire was escorted into the great hall by a trio of aurors, one carrying it and another two flanking him. He was glad that they were taking the situation seriously.

Having scanned the entirety of the Hogwarts library, including those restricted books that did not have extraneous requirements to read them, he knew that the goblet of fire was an incredibly powerful magical artefact, being able to accurately judge the strength and potential ability of large numbers of people, all through their magical signature.

However, upon reading the records of the previous tournaments (and those would have been ridiculously difficult to find without the search function built into his scanned library) he had learned that there was no restriction on age built into the artifact. That the organizers of this tournament were doing their best to prevent underage students from being entered was a good thing, because the majority of underage students that had been entered in the previous tournaments had often failed to survive even the first task.

"Now, I am sure that all of you are very excited to hear the results." Headmaster Dumbledore was saying over the low chatter of students. "But I would like to ask that all students lower their voices before the goblet makes its decision."

The aurors set the visibly glowing goblet in front of the head table, just close enough that the headmaster would reach into it if he so wished.

A minute of silence passed, bated breaths eagerly waiting for the goblet's decision. The goblet's previously blue flames grew agitated before flaring red.

A piece of burnt parchment flew out, landing in Headmaster Dumbledore's hand and the already silent hall swelled with anticipation.

"The champion for Beauxbatons is Amelie Moreau!"

The small body of French students cheered as a raven haired beauty stood up and curtsied at Dumbledore before taking her slip of paper from his hand and walking to the antechamber behind the head table.

Another flaring of the goblet signified the second champion. "The champion from Durmstrang is Aleksandra Ivanova!"

Cheers rang from the mixed group of Durmstrang students, accompanied by heavy stomps on the ground as the more stocky Ukrainian woman entered the antechamber.

Once more the goblet flared, and the headmaster's eyebrow rose very slightly before he announced. "The champion from Hogwarts is Justinian Nott."

Nott's house of Ravenclaw was first to lead the cheers, though they were closely followed by Slytherin and then Hufflepuff and Gryffindor. Harry wondered though what would have happened if Nott was in Slytherin like his younger brother Theo.

Once he had passed into the antechamber with the other students, the headmaster clapped his hands together with a jovial expression on his face. "Now that the goblet has finished its selection, I would like to give you all some words to think upon tonight:

This tournament was first created as a way for the three premier European schools to show the strength of their students to all of Europe, but as time grew, the…." he faltered as the goblet began to flare red again.

Harry watched along with the rest of the hall as a fourth strip of paper flew into the headmaster's outstretched hand. He looked at it for several seconds, gaze darkening before his head turned toward the Hufflepuff table.

"Harry Potter."

For a moment Harry froze, unable to believe what he was hearing. How had he been entered when he kept at least ten meters between him and the goblet at all times?

He had enough adventures in the past few years without looking for trouble like this tournament!

Unfortunately trouble had once again come looking for him.

A low buzzing sound made its way through the hall, the students turning to look in his direction.

Accusing.

Angry.

"Please join the other champions Mr. Potter." The headmaster stated wearily.

Harry shook his head. "I'm sorry headmaster, but I never entered my name in that cup."

Harry looked at his table, his gaze pleading for his housemates to believe him.

Cedric looked at Harry in the eye and mouthed "swear it" before covering his heart with his fist.

Harry froze for a moment, trying to understand, then brightened as he realized what Cedric meant. Turning to face the hall, he flicked his wand out of his holster, remembering some of the lessons that had been passed down from the elder years.

"I, Harry Potter, swear upon my magic that I did not knowingly or willingly enter my name in the goblet of fire, may my magic bind my words as truth lest I be struck down where I stand."

Low murmurs ran down the hall as those versed in the older traditions of the magical world explained the significance of that oath to their neighbors. It was an oath that had fallen out of use centuries ago.

By using that oath, Harry would have died had he been lying, instead of simply losing his magic like the oaths today. That he had even dared to invoke such an oath showed how serious he was about this.

Looking pale, Cedric nodded and spoke the second pair of the ritualized words. "So witnessed as truth."

His voice, quiet, carried through the room like a crack of thunder, jolting the students out of their stupor.

Harry gave a thankful smile to Cedric, heart lifting as almost as one the students of Hufflepuff stood and echoed after Cedric. "So witnessed as truth!"

With a look back to the headmaster, he was surprised to see visible shock, giving way to honest pleasure.

Then one of the ministry representatives, Bartemius Crouch, had to ruin the atmosphere.

"Though the support given to Mr. Potter from his house is to be commended, it does not excuse him from participating in the events of the Triwizard tournament, which are part of a binding contract."

Harry's heart dropped a little as the headmaster's expression seemed to dim as well. "Unfortunately, Mr. Crouch is correct on this matter, should you refuse to participate once chosen, the goblet will tear your magic from you, likely killing you in the process." He gestured toward the antechamber the other students had entered into.

The room seemed to chill at his words as the student body realized just how dangerous the object some of them had entered their names into was. Harry gave a last look toward his house before clamping down on his fear and stiffening his spine. "If that is true, then I see no choice."

Staring eyes weighed on his back, but he forced himself to ignore them, pushing all but the path to the antechamber out of his thoughts.

The room was tastefully decorated in dark woods and earthy colors. The three champions were resting on differing pieces of furniture, though all three turned their heads to look at him.

"Potter? Why are you back here?" Nott asked, his aristocratic face narrowing in suspicion.

Harry inclined his head respectfully. "Apparently someone thought it would be a great joke to bewitch the goblet into making me a fourth champion."

"What do you mean Fourth champion?" The girl from Durmstrang, Aleksandra asked, dark eyes drilling into his own.

Before Harry could answer, the door to the great hall opened, and the ministry official, Bagman if he remembered right, pranced in first looking like the cat that got the canary.

"Well champions, impossible as it seems, Mr. Potter has been entered into the Triwizard tournament as a fourth champion."

"Potter is thirteen." Nott stated flatly. The other two official champions looked slightly startled at this, not realizing that Harry had been that young.

"A thirteen-year old in a contest for adults?" Aleksandra's raised eyebrow clearly stated her contempt of the idea. Harry agreed with her, even if her dismissive tone rankled him a little.

He knew that he was advanced compared to those in his year, but against students four years his elder it would mean nothing in a contest of magical knowledge and strength. The last thing he wanted was another year waiting for the other shoe to drop.

"What exactly is the contract I'm being held to?" He asked, seeing as the conversation was about to devolve into mudslinging by the tense air around the adult wizards.

Bagman looked distinctly uncomfortable. "Err, well you see Harry-"

Harry's eyes narrowed at the man for using his name so familiarly.

"The exact wording of the contract has been lost to the ages." Barty Crouch interjected smoothly.

Harry sent an incredulous look the man's way. "So I am bound into a tournament with a contract that no-one knows the exact details of as a fourth champion. What exactly is keeping me from losing my magic just by being an unexpected addition to the tournament?" He hissed.

"As you are still bearing your magic, it is very unlikely that particular punishment will be levied against you so long as you follow the rules of the tournament." Crouch countered.

Harry closed his eyes and took a slow breath in a vain attempt to keep his temper. A flicker of telekinetic energy escaped his clenched hands, distorting the air around them and startling Amelie, who sat closest to him.

"And what exactly are those rules?" He managed to get out, ignoring the girl's curious look.

"You will not solicit material help from any of your instructors here at the school, whether it be through books, training, potions, or other magical materials. You will complete the tasks with only your wand and those magical tools approved by the judges beforehand. And finally, you will participate to the best of your ability. Do you understand these rules?"

Harry forced himself to keep from grinding his teeth at the condescension. "What of non-magical tools and clothing, are those allowed as well?"

Crouch snorted dismissively. "So long as no magic is used to retrieve them, you may use whatever muggle tools you wish, now do you understand these rules?"

Something about his phrasing set Harry's hackles rising. "This is another unspoken contract isn't it?" He asked, eyes narrowed in suspicion.

Nott looked briefly surprised that Harry had noticed before his face returned to dismissal.

"If a champion does not acknowledge these rules, then they will automatically forfeit and lose their magic." Crouch said calmly.

Harry was beginning to hate this man. "Then I, Harry Potter, do understand these rules."

Crouch nodded, turning to the other champions in the room. "Do you three understand these rules?"

"Yes."

"Da."

"Oui."

"Good, Now Ludo will explain the basics of the tasks."

Justinian Nott: older brother of Theo Nott, one of if not the best dueler in the house of Ravenclaw, his family magic is heavily based around illusions, which makes it very hard to fight him for the mentally undefended. His family is currently hosting the host of Voldemort's new body, bertha jorkins

Amelie Moreau: French champion. Pureblood and very nasty, favors spells that slowly weaken her opponent while causing them pain, typically through changing the air around them or poisoning/rotting spells

Aleksandra Ivanova: Durmstrang champion: Fast and collected, prefers using transfiguration, but many of her spells can have nasty effects on her opponents, sometimes uses human transfiguration to make it hard for her opponents to adapt, ie giving them gills or hardening their muscles and skin so they can't move

October 1st

To say that Moros was upset with the events that had occurred during the Halloween feast was to say that an tropical hurricane was terrifying. As it was, his face resembled the calm before the storm, and it was only the man's legendary self control that prevented him from storming up to hogwarts and tearing Albus Dumbledore a new one.

Well, that and the man's desire to keep himself a secret from those that would try to take advantage of Harry.

"And you are certain of this...binding the artifact has on you?" Moros pressed.

Harry nodded unhappily. "I have the scanners on the band running full time while at Hogwarts, and they noted some kind of energy signature surrounding me once my name was called. Even now it is still there."

Moros paced, his image passing through Harry's bed as he did.

"If this tournament is as dangerous as you say, then I will need to work on making some form of protection for you...perhaps some form of shielded armor, thought that will take some time to design." The man broke off, fingers twitching as if he were visualising something.

After a moment, Moros' attention reverted back to Harry. "Do you have any idea of the dangers you might face?"

"I spent the last few hours researching the tournament through the scanned library." Harry said, closing his eyes as he reviewed what little information he had been able to gather.

"As far as I know, there will be three tasks, each a uniquely different challenge. One will likely involve danger from some kind of magical beast, another will require me to test my knowledge and creativity, and the third seems to be facing the unknown."

"And not always in that order?" Moros asked rhetorically as he steepled his fingers.

After a moment, he turned to Harry again. "Are there no other sources on the tournament you are willing to try besides books?"

"Well….I was also thinking about asking Elethea for information on the tournament." Harry offered. There weren't many other choices for him besides her. Binns was useless, and the other Professors had been fielding questions about the tournament since it was first announced.

He also doubted that Ludo Bagman would be much help to him. Barty Crouch was a reluctant possibility, but the man was never at Hogwarts, so the point was moot.

Moros frowned, unsure of the wisdom of trusting the basilisk. Her words had been true so far, but she was an apex predator. It would likely be in her nature to prey upon those that could not defend themselves well from her.

"Ask, but be careful when dealing with her Harry." He cautioned over the link.

"I will." Harry promised, even though he doubted Elethea would even try to do anything to him. She had a rather large amount of affection for those she believed to be of Slytherin's line.

Later that night

Chamber of secrets,

"So you don't know anything about the Triwizard tournament?" Harry asked, trying to force down his disappointment. Given her age, he would have thought that Elethea might have known at least something about the contest.

The massive basilisk tilted her head. "Though I have lived for a millennium, I have not had much interaction with the members of the castle young speaker. Most of my time has been spent sleeping or hunting in the forbidden forest when roused from my hibernation."

"Then why haven't there been any rumors of you over the centuries?" Harry asked. He would of thought a massive snake would be hard to miss.

Elethea attempted a smile, her displayed fangs making Harry take an unconscious step back.

"A good huntress knows how to remain hidden from her prey." She said simply.

Right….Harry decided to move on from that topic, especially after the way she described other wizards as prey..

"Then, is there anything you can tell me about the goblet of fire? It was what was used to bind me into the tournament -" He closed his mouth when Elethea made a threatening hiss and lunged forward, her face was not even a meter from his own. Harry stilled completely as her tongue flicked out, scenting the air around him.

"What cursed human has used that black artefact on you Speaker?" She hissed lowly.

"Black artefact?" Harry asked. In magical terms, black usually referred to the darkest of arts. He felt fear trickle down his spine in worry at what it could have done.

"The goblet of fire was created by the Greek wizards long ago to hold those with the greatest of crimes within the cells of Tartarus. It is said that the goblet would judge those sent to the prison, and those convicted by it had their very souls bound to the magic of the goblet.

"What happened to those prisoners?" Harry asked with trepidation.

"Those that tried to escape the prison would feel the fire of the goblet in their veins for seven days and nights before their magic and life-force were ripped from them." Elethea stated as flatly as she was capable, the words carried in a vicious hiss. .

Harry felt his hands clench involuntarily. A week of feeling burned alive before being allowed the relative mercy of dying. And this artifact was now tied to him and the other champions.

"How do I prevent the goblet from punishing me?"

"Without knowing exactly how it has been altered since ancient times, I would assume that you would need to follow the rules laid down by those that created the tournament."

Ok, so don't cheat, unless you want to be burned alive for a week. Harry thought to himself.

After he determined that Elethea knew nothing more about the Goblet, he decided to move on to something that had caught his interest over the summer. Something she obviously noticed.

"Was there something else, young speaker?"

"Yes, I was wondering what you knew about enhancement rituals." They had been a curiosity during his few moments of free time over the summer. Now in a contest against students four years his senior he would need every edge he could get.

Elethea cocked her head, and he got the feeling that she was pleased with him for some reason.

"I know of many ways humans can improve themselves, if they are willing to bear the costs."

Harry took a deep breath and looked directly at her eyes. Tinted green by the secondary eyelids she used to keep her killing gaze inactive, they dared him to say yes, to prove himself.

"Please teach me what you know will help me survive this tournament."

"As you wish young speaker."

Brimming with knowledge from his conversation with Elethea, Harry made an odd picture to the members of Hufflepuff house over the next few weeks.

Though he did attempt to socialize, especially with a shy Joshua, he was never far from his books, poring over page after page with an intensity that rivaled the most studious Ravenclaw. His housemates dismissed it as worry over the tournament, and several of the elder students actually went through the trouble of compiling lists of useful spells for him.

Though their efforts weren't needed with his access to the whole of the Hogwarts library in electronic form, Harry truly appreciated the work they did to help him. His house was supporting him wholeheartedly, something that could not be said for the rest of the school.

Despite his oath in the Great Hall, there was a great sense of disbelief in the halls of Hogwarts when it came to his legitimacy in the tournament. Ravenclaw house was especially hostile to his presence, encouraged by the dismissive attitude their champion Nott showed Harry in public.

In contrast, the school of Beauxbatons seemed to largely pity him. He wasn't sure why they did, but guessed it may have something to do with his age. And yet, they seemed to prefer to keep their distance, for which he was glad.

Durmstrang was indifferent, if a little contemptuous of his ability to perform in the tournament. The number of comments on his size and ability were grating, but he tried to ignore them as well. He had not asked to be entered in this tournament. But if he had to participate, then he would do his best to prepare, if nothing else to improve his chances of survival.

At the moment he was standing on a dueling platform in one of the unused areas of the school, his self appointed dueling tutor a dozen meters away from him on the other end of the platform.

"Alright Harry, let's try it again." Tonks muttered impatiently, looking a little annoyed.

Harry gave her a weak smile. Ever since the tournament had begun she had been demanding that he let her teach him how to duel better. (Personally he thought she just wanted an excuse to get back at him for their duel in his second year)

His major problem was that he was still more inclined to dodge her spells than to try and fight back. She was understandably annoyed that he kept 'jumping around like a demented toad' instead of shielding and deflecting.

"Ready?" She asked.

He nodded, his wand held loosely in his hand.

She tensed, and flung her first spell, a small burst of pink light. Harry forced himself to shield against it, using a variant of the protego that deflected weak to medium strength spells at the same angle they were fired.

"Good, now keep up that shield and move as little as possible." She said, a small smirk on her lips.

Harry did, first moving the shield to block a trio of stunners, then an increasingly powerful barrage that pulled at his instincts to move.

A spell he had missed hit him in the leg, and his knee was locked into place.

He cursed lowly before his distraction cost him his wand, a disarming charm stealing it from his fingers.

"Hmm, you got distracted again Harry, you can't have tunnel vision in a duel, it will only end badly for you."

Harry glowered at her as she gave him back his wand. He hated losing, especially when he knew he could win if she just let him move around normally.

Tonks looked a little too pleased with herself over getting him again, the sadist. She was a bloody Seventh year!

She struck again without warning, a single stunner aimed dead center on his chest. Before he could even think of shielding, he moved his wand in front of him, a flood of instinctual telekinesis funneling out in front of him and abruptly deflecting the spell to his right.

Tonks was staring at him dumbfounded. "How the bloody hell did you do that Harry? Was that some kind of invisible shield?"

Harry frowned, staring at his wand."I dunno, i just wanted to deflect it, like with the shield."

She looked at him dubiously, then shrugged. "Let's see if we can do that again Harry, whatever it is, it looks like it will be useful if you can use it on higher level spells."

October 31

Deep in the Forbidden forest

Just before midnight.

Rituals were incredibly dangerous magic. More often than not, they were ruled by esoteric factors that many did not take into account, such as the phase of the moon or the distance from the sun. Harry could only speculate why this was so, but Elethea had insisted that if he wanted to perform the ritual she had specified, then they would receive the best result on All Hallows Eve, or as it had been known in the time of the founders, Samhain.

In the magical world, Samhain was seen as the time to celebrate lost family and friends, to welcome their spirits into their homes, if only for a short time. It was also known as the beginning of transition between the harvest and the winter, life and death.

Transition was the key to the ritual of blessing, the ritual that Elethea had insisted would give him the best benefits with only excruciating physical pain as a cost. Harry considered that much better than losing his humanity or ability to procreate like in some of the other rituals he had found.

In essence, the ritual involved a magical creature, preferably an intelligent one, and gifted the practitioner of the ritual with traits of that creature. In the case of a basilisk, there were several benefits, mainly a very high resistance to poisons, reduced damage from magical attacks, and a greatly improved reaction speed. At least, this was what the ritual had done for Salazar Slytherin if Elethea was to be believed.

The only disadvantage to the ritual was that it was a one time deal. Some wizards had been greatly underwhelmed by the benefits of their chosen magical creature and had tried the ritual again, only to die as their bodies were torn apart by the conflicting magics. Not a pleasant way to go by any means.

But that was alright, Harry really couldn't see any better option than a millennia old basilisk, and even if he did not have any visible improvements, he would not be foolish enough to try again.

The ritual itself was rather simple. No chants were needed, only a small circle of runes about two meters in diameter; written in the blood of the caster mixed with the willingly given essence of the creature that they had chosen, in this case, basilisk venom.

Harry was incredibly careful when handling the mixture, using his telekinetic abilities to move the ink in absence of a ritual brush impervious to basilisk venom. And he had only done this after clearing it with her, not knowing if it could interfere with the ritual itself.

He had practiced the circle countless times, as the circle needed to be finished precisely at the time that the moon rose to its peak. The circle was not perfectly symmetrical though, forming a shape similar to three-fourths of a pie, with a symbol for the donating creature facing toward the direction of the moon's rise.

Elethea had assured him that her presence would prevent any interference from the other creatures of the forest, but Harry had placed his own protections as well, subsonic emitters that would discourage even the insect life from coming close to the ritual circle. Even the smallest unknown element could cause catastrophic failure, and there was no way he would take that risk.

As night fell, he closed his eyes, waiting for his band, now outside of the circle, to signal the beginning of the ritual.

The electronic beep was oppressively loud in the otherwise silent forest, and his eyes snapped open. His hands raised over the mixture of blood, venom, and ink, thin streams of the fluid rising into the air.

Slowly, methodically, he directed the ink onto the ground, forming the outer ring, a chain of the nordic rune for serpent joined with those of heritage and gift.

Once the main circle was finished, he needed to complete a circle both for himself and Elethea. He began with hers, reinforcing the concept of gift and heritage several times within her circle, but also with runes for truth, honor, and belief.

His own circle was based around the concept of man, becoming something more than man through the gift. This gift was something that would not leave him with time, so other runes for eternity and life were added to the circumference of the circle.

Mind aching from the strain of directing the ink, he felt the satisfaction of a perfect ritual circle fill him, just as the moon reached its peak in the sky. Elethea, knowing her part, touched her head to the center of her circle, eyes closed. Had she not been as intelligent as she was, a modified version of the circle would have been needed to contain her as the donor animal.

Kneeling in his own circle, he felt a jolt of something run through him and tried to keep his muscles from spasming. It was a futile effort however, as his mind was overwhelmed with pain and forced him unconscious.

Once he was out, the magicks of the circle were given free reign, following the lines and patterns imprinted on the ground by blood, ink and venom, elements of two beings linked to each other through magic, mind, and body.

On the surface, his appearance changed very little, only a slight increase in visible muscle mass. However, as he slept, the magic of the basilisk found its way into every cell of his body, forcing them to adapt. Muscle mass became far denser, synapse connections grew stronger, and skin gained a field of energy similar to that of Elethea's scales that would lower the potency of magic cast on him, though nowhere near the same degree.

However, this was not the only change that would occur this night. As Elethea watched over the speaker, she felt a faint sense of dark magic growing stronger as the ritual continued. Her eyes narrowed in on the human's head, where a black ichor began dribbling out of his scar.

With a low menacing hiss, Elethea glared at the offending magic that tasted of her previous master. How could one of Salazar's line have fallen so far as to split his soul?

You are no longer worthy of the Slytherin name Tom Marvolo Riddle. May the great Mother banish you to the oblivion for your crimes!

She spat at the mass of dark magic once it was all out, her venom eating apart the fragment of her former Master's soul with relish and then dissolving the ground below it.

Harry remained unconscious, blissfully unaware that the remnant of Voldemort's had even existed within his body.

-the blessing ritual was what gave Slytherin the ability to speak to snakes. It destroys the horcrux in Harry, but he still retains the ability for parcel tongue because of the ritual. Basilisk is horribly offended by the presence of the soul anchor in a child, declares that her master's heir is no longer worthy of the slytherin name if he has desecrated his soul in such a way.

Harry talks to the basilisk, asking about information on how to make himself stronger, she gives him the idea for the ritual. Moros is very wary of the idea, and starts working on making a form of power armor for Harry to use during the tasks. Harry tries the ritual anyway, trusting the basilisk, and Moros is very unhappy with him, though also relieved that nothing seems wrong with Harry.

-harry uses the basilisk for a blessing ritual, a rather obscure ritual that takes a willingly given part of a self-aware magical animal. This ritual is in place of the dragon animagus, and grants him increased speed, improved reaction time, and resistance to energy attacks which include the plasma staffs of the goauld, which will not kill him, but still give him second to third degree burns. Makes minor spells have little effect, and gives him increased resistance to higher level spells as well.

-ritual has 3 stages: identification, purification, and addition

That same night

Somewhere in Devon, England

****Warning: This scene contains mild gore and imagery that some might find disturbing, proceed at your own risk.*******

Lord Aurelius Carrow repressed a shiver as his house elf placed the bound witch in the center of the ritual circle. His master, little more than a wraith, stood beside him, eyes like coals burning as they examined the nude pureblood chosen by his servant.

The Bulstrode line was known for their physical strength and slight resistance to foreign magic, the result of an unfortunate inclusion of troll blood deep in their family history. Though generally having less intelligence and magic than most other families, this defect did not bother the undead dark lord given the parameters of the ritual, which called for a strong vessel to house his spirit. The magic inhabiting the body would be his alone.

If he was capable of breathing, Voldemort would have taken a deep breath of anticipation.

This was the night where the borders between life and death were at their thinnest, the night of Samhain. And it was fitting that this night of life and death would give life to his new body from the unwilling sacrifice of the woman bound below him.

Belladonna Bulstrode, eldest sibling to Millicent, made terrified sounds through her gag. No outside magic could be used directly on her for the entirety of the ritual, there was too much chance of interference. Goosebumps raised on her naked skin from the cold October air, but her captors did not give a thought to her comfort.

Her family had only been too willing to hand her over to Carrow when he explained his desire to resurrect their lord through an incredibly dark ritual. Using her womb to form the vessel of their master would be her ultimate service to the pureblood cause. Though given that the birth of the new vessel would consume her magic and life force, she would have been understandably unwilling to participate in the ritual had she known how it would end.

Aurelius looked to the moon, then to an odd contraption that resembled a watch with ten hands to be doubly sure.

"Move her arms and legs as we discussed." He dictated to his house elf.

The elf was quick to comply, physically binding the witch's hands and feet in a spread eagle fashion.

Aurelius took a potion from his robe, directing the elf to feed it to her. Once the last drop passed through her lips, his lips thinned in resolve. "That will be all Mipsey, you are not to tell any being, alive or otherwise of what is happening here tonight.

Mipsey nodded fearfully before giving a curtsey and disappearing with a pop.

Aurelius looked to the full moon once again. "Let us begin." He intoned, and began channeling his magic into the ritual circle.

Voldemort watched in anticipation as his servant began the next step in his resurrection. Soon, he would be back to his full power, and continue the work that damned Potter boy had interrupted all those years ago.

The patterns of runes etched around Belladonna seemed to writhe, snaking upward from the ground and onto the unwilling sacrifice's body. Her mouth opened in a wail as the tendrils continued along her extremities, moving onto her torso before converging on her stomach and shifting to an angry red.

Aurelius waited, continually supplying low levels of magic into the web of lines around the bound woman. Once the moon was at its zenith he gestured sharply at the bound woman with his wand and intoned. "Flesh of the servant, you shall grant your Lord a new form!"

Voldemort hissed in triumph as his spectral form was drawn into Belladona's body, the bound woman writhing and shrieking through her gag. The markings on her body glowed an eerie yellow before fading into her skin.

Aurelius conjured himself a chair and drew a tome from his expanded pocket. Now to wait.

It was the lack of breathing that made him realize the ritual was finished. Aurelius grimaced at the dessicated husk that had formerly been Belladona Bulstrode. Her skin resembled that of a mummified corpse, dry and tight, save for the grotesque caricature of a pregnancy which held his reborn Lord.

Having dealt with far more squeamish things in his days as a Death Eater, Aurelius drew a ritual dagger from his robes and made a long, careful incision on the dead woman's belly. Once finished, he quickly stepped back, casting a liquid-repelling shield.

Black tarry fluid spilled from the corpse's ruined stomach, revealing a grey man sized form curled up in the remains of her body.

Red slitted eyes opened and glittered with triumph as the abomination stepped out of the witch's remains.

Lord Voldemort walked the earth once more.

Forbidden Forest

Early Morning

Harry woke on the hard ground of the forest before the sun had even began to rise.

Blearily, he opened his eyes. His body felt strange, lighter somehow.

With a low groan at the ache in his muscles. He pushed himself upward, only to stumble as his changed form pushed him up farther than he was expecting.

"Ah, you are awake." He heard Elethea's unmistakable voice sound behind him.

He started, jumping a foot in the air and landing awkwardly on the uneven ground.

"Dammit!" He cursed as he felt his ankle. He must have twisted it.

"Are you well Hatchling?" The basilisk asked, though if he strained he could hear a faint tinge of amusement in her tone.

"I've been better." Harry grumbled, squinting in the low light. Elethea's head towered over him as she examined his body critically.

"I see that the ritual has taken well to you." She hissed, looking pleased.

Harry slowly pushed himself up. Hiis head felt strangely clear, as if a lifelong congestion had disappeared overnight.

"It feels like it worked." He said, marveling at the increased clarity of his vision. He had never realized how pitiful human eyesight could be, which was ironic considering that most snakes had terrible vision.

"You carry a hint of my scent, as you should." Elethea stated with approval.

Harry supposed that made sense given he had essentially taken a part her essence within himself, though it felt quite strange to realize he was part snake now.

As the early sun touched his face, Harry realized the time and cursed. He had to get back to the castle before someone realized that he hadn't been in his bed. With a mental command, he used his band to heal his ankle before taking off at a run toward the castle, thanking her over his shoulder.

Elethea watched him silently, pondering the soul fragment the ritual had removed from the boy she was rapidly becoming attached to. The fragment of soul that had been removed from him had been far too weak to be a half a soul, or even a tenth.

That was worrisome, as it implied Tom Riddle had split his soul at least four times.

But how to tell the younger speaker that he was once hosting the soul of the one who killed his parents?

November 7th

First task

"Excellent, all of the champions have arrived." Bagman nearly cheered, wearing a flashy yellow outfit that clearly was meant to be worn by one of less...generous girth.

His mood was not shared by the other three champions within the tent. Nott simply ignored him, eyes closed and fingers steepled together as he muttered something under his breath.

Aleksandra's face could have been carved from stone for all that it moved during his flamboyant entrance.

Harry tried to not show his nervousness. He had spent the last few weeks training harder than ever before to learn his new limits. Other than a slight, but noticeable increase in his physical strength and reflexes, he had not found any other differences in his body.

He had yet to have another duel with Tonks, so he did not know the limits of the magical protection he received from the ritual. And he did not want to ask Moros at the moment either, given the man's volcanic reaction to him performing a ritual without even consulting him.

"Now, outside this tent the tournament organizers have created an obstacle course of sorts, though much more challenging to suit the tournament. Each champion will run the course separately, with this tent muted so that none of you get any clues from our commentary. As this task requires you to brave the unknown, all i will say is that finish the task you will need to open one of four chests at the end of the course.

How you open the chest is up to you, but be warned that they contain instructions for the second task. Be careful how you open them, or you will be behind the other champions during the next task!" Bagman finished jovially. "Good luck champions!"

And with that the man left the tent, though Crouch remained.

"You will begin the task in order of age, youngest to oldest." He said, looking directly at Harry.

Harry closed his eyes and took an inaudible breath before nodding.

"Good luck." Amelie offered quietly, and Harry gave her a small smile for the support. Nott merely nodded politely, though his eyes showed his apprehension. Whether it was for himself or for Harry he couldn't tell.

He opened the tent flap and saw an earthen wall on both sides. A dirt path lay open in front of him, slanting upward so that his vision of what lay behind it was obscured.

"Begin!" Bagman's voice called, and Harry jolted before sprinting forward at a speed most wizards would find hard to match.

He bounded over the lip of the hill and his eyes widened as massive thorny vines swarmed at him from a shaded cave.

With a curse he sprang to the right, trying to find a way around the cave, only to see that it blocked the entire path, unless…

With a smirk he ran at the mouth of the cave, gathering his will. He touched his chest with his wand, casting a variant of the weightless charm and waited until he was just out of reach of the plant and jumped.

"And Mr. Potter comes to the first obstacle of the path, a cave filled with barbed snare. As any herbologists among you will know barbed snare is a more light tolerant version of devils snare that uses its long poisoned thorns to catch its prey."

"Mr. Potter seems to be looking for a way around the cave. Too bad for him that the…." Bagman trailed off as Harry tapped his chest with his wand and then jumped twenty feet in the air, well over the cave, and landed back on the path with the ease of an experienced gymnast.

"Well, that was interesting, it seems like Mr. Potter used some kind of physical magic to jump over the cave. A very rare magic indeed."

Using his telekinesis to orient himself for landing was childs' play, and he removed the weightless charm once he touched the ground; following the path as it swerved to the right.

Up next was a pool of water and a boat on the shore. Harry rolled his eyes as he saw the palm-sized hole in the boat that would need to be repaired somehow if he wanted to cross. Of course, that was assuming he would need to use the boat to cross.

It almost felt like showing off, but he wanted to finish the task as soon as possible. He focused, pushing energy into his body to increase his speed, then telekinetic energy just below the soles of his feet just as he reached the water.

A moment later and he was running across the surface, unable to hide a giddy smile as he crossed within seconds and continued along the path.

The next obstacle was a canyon and tightrope. He briefly wondered who had thought of using the muggle idea before crossing the canyon in the same way as the first obstacle.

In the stands, a visibly unhappy Crouch watched as the course was being conquered by a thirteen year old that had yet to cast anything other than a few esoteric charms. Whatever physical magic Potter was using was something the tournament designers had not thought of, and it showed.

If this kept up they would need to rethink their approach on the later tasks, the embarrassment the boy was making of their tasks would not reflect well on the ministry.

It was when he came to the fourth and final obstacle that he stopped with a jerk at the sight that met his eyes.

Long lizard-like body? Check.

Wide bat-like wings? Also check.

Fire breath?

He dodged a massive ball of fire as he backpedaled and cursed the designers of the tournament. Who the hell thought bringing a dragon into this task was a good idea?

Red and gold scales rustled as the dragon roared in challenge. A Chinese Fireball.

The asiatic breed of dragon was chained down in a small sloping pit littered with chest high barriers for the champions to hide behind. It could not move anything but its neck, but that didn't make it any less dangerous with the range of its fire.

Frill quivering in rage, the dragon let out an ear-piercing shriek as the fireball failed to hit it's prey. Harry shuddered as he followed several of the earthen barriers to a path he had failed to see before, noting that four ornate keys were hanging on thick ropes around the dragon's neck. Odd.

His eyes gleamed when he saw the four metal chests lying along the side of the path. Each was engraved with innumerable tiny runic clusters in a way that somehow managed to look elegant. However, the most prominent feature of each chest was a large keyhole equally ornate as the keys hanging from the dragon's neck. His eyebrows furrowed as he stared at the chests. Whoever designed them made it incredibly obvious that they wanted the champions to take a key from the dragon instead of opening the chest on their own, but why?

Bagman was in his element now that Potter's progress had come to a halt.

"Mr. Potter seems to be having some trouble now Witches and Wizards. Those chests were carved by teams of master enchanters. Only a few advanced charms are capable of opening them, and those spells typically aren't learned until sixth year at the earliest!"

"His best option is to take one of the keys around the neck of that Chinese Fireball! But how will he manage this without endangering his life?"

Harry grimaced as Bagmans words confirmed what he feared. The multitude of runes covering the chests had resisted every single unlocking spell he knew how to cast. A few experimental destructive spells were simply absorbed into the chest much like the enchantments in the Potter journals, though the runes seemed to glow with heat as the spells were absorbed, unlike those arrays of his family which dispersed most of the magic back into the air.

He could try and overpower the chest with repeated spells, but he did not know how many spells would be required to wear them out. Worse, he would risk destroying whatever was in the chest if he wasn't careful, leaving him clueless for what would happen in the next task.

Which only left the Dragon.

There was no way to fight that thing head on, not with its magical resistance. His best chance was to stun it somehow.

He looked at his band, knowing that it might be able to kill the dragon with its vast power reserves, but quickly placed that option as a last resort.

It was technically a 'muggle tool' but one so ridiculously far in advance of anything on this earth that even the judges would know it, and would think that he cheated by using a magical tool instead.

He had no idea how their beliefs of whether or not he cheated factored into the Goblet's punishments, so he was forced to come up with another idea.

A chanced peek at the Dragon had another fireball sent his way, and he quickly hid behind the thick wall leading to the chests as it impacted with a roar. Those fireballs were a real problem. Any attempt to get close to the keys would end up with him being roasted.

But how could he remove the danger of the fire? Was it a chemical based attack or one based on oxygen? His eyes widened as he realized his solution.

He held his wand aloft in the direction of the dragon, summoning every dreg of power he had. This was going to tax him heavily, but if it worked, it would be more than worth it.

Eyes closed, he felt out the presence of the dragon from behind the wall and used his telekinesis to form a one way barrier around it that would allow air out, but not in.

His hands shook as the barely visible barrier locked into place. Now came the hard part. With his will, he increased the kinetic force the barrier was creating inward, dramatically increasing the air pressure.

And as air was known to do, it shifted, searching for balance. Thousands of cubic meters of air were drained from the dome within seconds, and he felt sweat across his brow as he concentrated, still hidden behind the wall. The dragon snarled at the surge in pressure, whirling about and trying to escape its chains.

Over the course of a minute, the air was thin enough that the dragon was having trouble breathing. It struggled to move, to escape from its confines. But it was already weak from the lack of air, and slowly, it slipped into unconsciousness.

Harry held the barrier in place for another minute, knowing that the beast was still alive from the frantic panting of its chest, then slowly began allowing the air back into the space, to avoid killing the beast with a sudden flood of air pressure into the area.

To his relief the dragon did not stir.

On shaking legs, he pushed away from where he had been lying against the wall, and forced himself to jog up to the knocked out beast. It would only be unconscious for at most another minute or two.

He cut one of the cords and physically grabbed the key, gingerly stepping away from the beast as its frantic breathing started to slow. Not good. It was close to waking up.

He sprinted away from the beast with his prize, just as its eyes snapped open.

It let out an enraged roar at his actions before spitting out a fireball of far greater size, but by then he was already behind the protective wall, and the attack fizzled out against the thick earth He held his hand to his chest, panting heavily, before taking his hard won prize and unlocking a chest.

He was disappointed to find only a piece of parchment within.

Once alive, now brought down

Carved apart, and then reformed

Eternally wandering, yet never touching

The ground from which I came

What am I?

Harry furrowed his brows. Could they be any more vague with this riddle?

"Mr. Potter?"

He looked up at Bagman's magnified voice, then realized he was still standing within the course.

With an embarrassed gesture he quickly stuffed the parchment in his pocket and left, a roar of approval coming from the crowd as he did.

Later that day

Hufflepuff common room

The reaction from his housemates was to be expected, yet he still found himself overwhelmed by the explosion of sound that greeted his ears once he had been released from an after task pep-talk with the other champions. He had been third place for avoiding the first two obstacles, only gaining 32 points from the judges out of fifty. It didn't really matter to him though, he was alive and unharmed.

"You barmy bastard!" Cedric looked torn between hugging him and strangling him and quickly settled for a gentle noggie. "That dragon could've bit you in half with how close you were!"

"Gerroff Cedric!" Harry laughed, pushing the elder student's hand away. But that was a mistake.

Once Cedric was pushed away, the entire house swarmed him, clapping hands on his back, shaking his hand and shouting in his ears.

"How did you jump like that? Must've been thirty feet!"

"-Never thought someone could take down a dragon so fast!"

"-how did you run on water, that's impossible!?"

With a sharp gesture he created and imploded a small pocket of air, making a deafening crack and buying himself some much needed breathing space.

"I'll say it once." He began mildly as the room silenced. "The first obstacle was me casting a weight reducing charm on myself, then jumping over the cave."

"The second….was family magic." Here he laughed a little at the groans to his non-answer, but he knew that few of them would try to pry after he named it unique to his family.

"And the third…." He paused, enjoying a little showmanship for once. "Was also family magic."

The groans were louder this time, and he held up a hand. "However...i'll tell you what the magic did." Several of the older students tried to speak, only to be hushed by their younger housemates lest he stop speaking.

"The spell I used on the dragon was created to deal with large out-of-control fires, and works by removing all of the air from a certain area." He said quietly, hating that he had to lie about his telekinesis.

"So you were suffocating the dragon to death?" Susan Bones sounded disapproving as she asked this.

"Not to death, just until it fell unconscious." Harry countered. "As it was I should have kept the spell up a little longer, a few more seconds and I would be been a little too crispy for my taste."

A few students chuckled, though many of the younger ones looked a little wide-eyed at the thought of him being 'crisped' by the four meter wide fireballs the dragon had been spewing at him. Even from the stands the heat could be felt somewhat.

"What was in the chest?" He recognized Joshua's voice this time, and he merely smiled as he withdrew the parchment, flicking his wand in Joshua's direction and sending the parchment to him.

Joshua fumbled slightly as he caught the parchment, opening it up as the badgers around him clamoured for a look. .

"Go ahead and read it aloud Joshua, I'm sure everyone else wants to know what it says." Harry chuckled as the younger boy made a startled squeak at seeing everyone's faces focused on him.

"Er, sure Harry." He mumbled, before forcibly clearing his throat

"Once alive, now brought down

Carved apart, and then reformed

Eternally wandering, yet never touching

The ground from which I came

What am I?"

Low muttering filled the room as his housemates puzzled over the meaning of the riddle.

"Once alive and carved….its talking about wood, I think." Zacharias Smith offered uncertainly.

"Makes sense, Justin added. " 'Specialy when it says it was reformed."

"Whats got me is the wandering part." Tonks muttered. How could something made of wood be constantly 'wandering' ? Wood didn't move on its own.

"Never touching the ground…." Joshua trailed off, before his eyes widened. "The wood doesn't touch the ground when it moves?"

"That's not right, the riddle said it didn't touch the ground from which it came…" Ernie shook his head.

But Harry was suddenly pondering Joshua's words. "No…, I think he is right, the wording could be two different things."

"What do you mean?" Cedric asked.

"If taken literally, the wood doesn't touch the ground that it came from, but that doesn't make sense with the rest of the riddle. But if the wood is literally not touching the ground at all, wouldn't all the land on earth…wait a sec, it's not touching the earth because it's on water!…..A boat!"

He took the parchment back from Joshua and a self-inking quill from one of the nearby tables.

"Harry wait- !" Justin called out. What if Harry was wrong about the answer? But he was too late to stop Harry from scribbling down A boat on the line below the riddle.

After a tense moment, the parchment went blank except for the word Correct before completely filling in with script detailing what he would need to do for the second task.

"Thanks guys!" Harry said after reading the task instructions to himself.

Joshua pointedly cleared his throat.

"Yes?"

"What does it say about the task Harry?"

Harry took a look at all the suddenly eager faces before a overly solemn expression crossed his face. "I'm afraid you will just have to wait and see like the rest of the school." He dodged a swat from Cedric on his right, only for Joshua and some of the younger years that followed his lead to come and dogpile him as he laughed.

Sirius stared at his pale arms, devoid of the manacles that had defined his existence for the last thirteen years.

He was free. After all of these years he was finally free.

A gentle hand on his arm made him jerk, looking into the stern yet friendly face of the woman who had hosted him in her home for the past few months.

"Let's get you to St. Mungo's Sirius, I promise nothing bad will happen to you while we get you healthy again."

Sirius wet his scratchy throat. "What about Harry, does he know?"

Amelia shook her head. "Not yet Sirius, he'll find out with the rest of Magical Britain when the evening Prophet comes out."

Sirius was torn. He wanted, no, needed to see his godson, to know that he was alright. At the same time though, Harry didn't even know about him, and the last thing he wanted to do was make a bad impression by appearing out of the woodwork and claiming to be the boy's godfather.

"Alright." He said quietly. "But I want to see him as soon as the healers release me from their claws."

Amelia rolled her eyes. Sirius had a known dislike for the Healers from an attack in the first war which kept him on bedrest for over a month. For the energetic man it had nothing short of torture.

-add more: Sirius wants to take custody of harry now that he is free, but Harry doesn't know him, is leery of him wanting to take him away from his guardian

Black's release

-pettigrew didn't know that remus was coming to teach, that is why he didn't run away

Dumbledore wants to use Black to get more information on harry and his guardian

*Disclaimer* I am not and will likely never be an expert in sailboats, all information here is from online research and brought to (I hope) a logical conclusion.

Second task

Race around the black lake, using magic to propel their boats.

They are given materials in the beginning of the task to make the boat, but they must only use their magic to do so.

Harry takes carbon from the water and forms it into diamonds to the shock of the crowd, as transfiguration does not work with precious materials, which are then used to hold an enchantment that lightens and strengthens the material of the boat, reducing drag.

Makes a trimaran boat for the extra stability and thinness of the hull, something only the muggleborn recognize.

Harry took in a deep breath of the cold February air, glad that he had convinced Moros to make him the Lantean equivalent of a drysuit. Made of advanced dynamic materials, it trapped just enough heat to match his skin temperature. Cold contracted the insulating fibers, so the colder the weather in comparison to his skin, the more heat would be kept. And of course, the material was completely water repelling.

He mentally shook his head in disbelief at the swimming gowns both Aleksandra and Amelie were wearing. They looked like girls from the 1920s, but at least they weren't wearing the old Victorian bathing gowns, those were not quite meant for swimming.

Nott appeared to be wearing an old fashioned pair of swimming trunks, but had foregone a shirt. Despite this, his skin appeared perfectly pale, not pink from the cold, so Harry assumed he was using some kind of warming charm. The other champions were also giving him evaluating looks at his method of dress, which he dismissed completely. He didn't care if he was wearing 'muggle' clothing, it was far more flexible and comfortable than the relics the other champions were wearing.

Impatient, Harry looked up toward the stands yet again, tapping his foot repeatedly. Witches and Wizards were still filing into the stands, chatting amiably while he and the other champions were standing feet away from the frigid Black Lake; each champion standing in front of a large pallet of wood, cloth, and rope. The lake itself was kept from freezing by a series of runic buoys that also served as the path for the race.

After a few more minutes, the stands appeared full of Wizarding Britain's high society. A

section was put aside for the foreign dignitaries and families, and looked painfully small. A subtle slight to the magicals from other countries? Then again space expansion charms could make that less of an issue.

A ringing sound not unlike a gong rang through the open air, and the stands silenced.

"Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to the second task of the triwizard tournament!"

Bagman was once again presiding over the event in his too-tight quidditch robes. Harry considered it a mercy that the man was seated as he spoke into the wizarding wireless microphone in front of him, representatives for Beauxbatons and Durmstrang speaking into their own microphones as translators for their respective nations.

"This task is based on two highly different fields of magic ladies and gentleman. First, our contestants must use the materials provided to them to create a sailboat, harkening back to the early days long before we enchanted brooms to fly. Each champion has an hour to build their boat, so use your time wisely champions, you will only get one dose of pepper-up potion after you are done."

Bagman stopped to clear his throat. "The final part of the task is a race to the platform on the other end of the lake and back again. Contestants will need to retrieve a small tablet from the platform before returning. Only one tablet may be taken, if a champion takes more than one they will be instantly disqualified from the task and receive zero points. Summoning the tablet or using any other method than physically picking it up will see the contestant disqualified as well."

"Magic use is allowed during the race, though keep in mind that if you focus on using magic offensively, your speed and ability to steer will be compromised."

"Now that you know the rules, it is my pleasure to say that the second task of the Triwizard tournament...has begun!"

A cannon-blast charm signalled the beginning of the task, and Harry immediately turned toward his pallet, gesturing with his wand.

The style of boat he chose for this task was a trimaran, something not commonly used in the western world until the 1960s. His reasoning was simple. After doing extensive research he learned that trimarans were very good in straight line movement, and also great in terms of stability. Their weight distribution along three hulls meant that they had no need for a keel like single-hulled boats, which in turn removed the drag that came from a heavy keel.

Long planks of wood now laid flat on the sand in front of him. With a gesture, he held his wand aloft, merging the material of the planks into a seamless main hull using transfiguration learned from some of the more advanced books in the Hogwarts Library. That done, he moved onto the creating the smaller hulls, which would be need to be denser than the main hull given their smaller size.

Another series of transfiguration spells and he created the connecting planks, transfiguring iron nails from the sand around him which were used to fasten the wooden planks in place.

Up in the stands, Ludo Bagman was having a grand old time commenting on the work of the champions so far.

"Mr. Nott seems to be the furthest ahead in this part of the task, as he has already created his hull and mast. Apparently the Nott family has had a tradition of sailing since the early saxon years, so it is not much of a surprise that young Justinian knows what he is doing." Bagman narrated, looking over the champions working in the sand below.

"The other champions are also doing quite well, Miss Moreau appears to be focusing a great deal on enchantments for her boat, but she is only done with the hull, so she may need to hurry if she wants a working boat in time."

"Now young Mr. Potter….I have no idea what he is doing here witches and wizards. As bizarre as it seems, Mr. Potter seems to be making a boat with three hulls, one in the middle and two smaller ones on the sides."

Bagman eyed Harry's wand movements critically, watching as the two smaller hulls were bound to the larger one with planks held by transfigured nails, then a series of spells were cast on the wood itself.

"It looks like Mr. Potter is using both nails and sticking charms to hold his boat together, not a bad strategy when a good finite can cancel out any magical effects on your boat."

"And finally we have Miss Ivanova, who looks to be making a replica Viking long-boat. But for some reason she is...wait a minute, now that is impressive. Miss Ivanova is transfiguring the soil around her into golems, which takes quite a decent amount of magical power to do right. These golems are using their magically enhanced speed and strength to quickly put her boat together, a very interesting strategy from the Durmstrang champion!"

15 minutes left

Once the hulls were done, the mast and rigging was far easier. A lesser known lubrication charm was placed along the base of the mast, making it far easier to rotate. Using magic to thread the rope through the sails was the work of a minute, and now came the most important part of his boat.

In magical theory there were some materials that could simply not be transfigured from others, one of these being gemstones, which were a the greatest natural anchor for enchantments. Which was why Harry was going to use his 'muggle tool' to create a suitable gemstone from the carbon content of the water. Not that the people in the stands would know that.

With a gesture, Harry moved his wand over the water of the lake, closing his eyes and using the sensors within his band to search for the traces of carbon especially prevalent in landlocked bodies of water.

Thin streams of water erupted from the lake surface before falling back in, the carbon harvested from them gathering in a small black sphere while the oxygen and hydrogen compounds they came from were transformed into water and waste gases. Once he had removed a few kilograms of carbon, he decided he had enough material for his diamond.

The cloud of carbon quickly began to shift and condense, shrinking from a dense cloud of graphite dust roughly the size of a beachball to a perfect 'sphere cut' diamond the size of his palm. He smiled, pushing some magic into the diamond to test its capacity. Yes, this would do nicely.

And the champions are close to finishing their boats, in fact surprisingly Mr. Potter seems to be the first to have finished his strange three-hulled boat. He's now turning toward the water and...my word, what is he doing with the water?"

As if his words were a magnet most of the crowd turned to look at Harry, who seemed to be extracting a grey something from the water of the lake. The cloud of gray grew quite large over the course of a minute, into a sphere thrice the size of Harry's head before rapidly shrinking into….

"I….I can't believe it….Mr. Potter has broken one of the fundamental rules of magic in creating a massive diamond with transfiguration!"

The roar from the crowds was absent as witches and wizards from around the world stared at the impossibly large diamond sitting in the thirteen year old champion's hand.

Once the diamond was formed came the fun part of the boat. He knew that he was short on time, so Harry decided to do something a little risky. He levitated his boat so that its hull was just above his chest, transfiguring the sand to steel to hold it up. He then focused on using his telekinesis, mapping every square centimeter of the boat in his mind before using his telekinesis to begin carving several sets of runes all over the boat.

The outer hull was covered in Nordic runes from grace and strength, commonly used by the Nordic magic practitioners on their longboats for rough travel at sea. Then came a trickier piece of work, a runic array that he had created less than a week ago to create wind on demand.

Wind was basically the movement of higher pressure air to a lower pressure area. So Harry created a runic array that created an adjustable low pressure zone just in front of the sails.

Knowing he only had minutes left, Harry added quick unbreakable runes to the mast and sheet, as well as every part of the ship he set eyes on. And finally, he used his memory of the runic array for absorbing energy from the Potter journals, laying in the array wherever it would not interfere with the numerous other arrays he had inscribed into the ship. After the first task, he doubted the other champions were going to make it easy on him to win this one as well.

Tired, he undid the transfiguration to steel holding up his boat, letting it fall the two feet to the ground with a soft thump. It was the matter of a moment to tie the numerous arrays to the diamond sitting in a small groove on the boat. He poured his magic into the diamond, knowing that the pepper-up potion would take care of his exhaustion long enough to complete the task.

"And that is time Witches and Wizards." Bagman said, a cannon blast punctuating his words.

The four champions stepped away from their boats, eyeing each other's work.

Nott had created an elegant, if simple 12 meter Dinghy, with the smaller jib-sail covered in runes made from some kind of paint. The mainsail also had runes, but also seemed to be unusually thick, as if Nott was expecting very high winds.

Ivanova, in contrast to Nott's simplicity, had created an elaborate 16 meter viking longboat. A snarling dragon-head decorated the bow, while benches for rowers, sat in the center of the hull. Her golems stood off to the side of her creation, each of them holding a long paddle.

Amelie had seemingly gone for minimalism, a plain 14 meter yacht. But given Bagman's comments, Harry more than expected her to have gone all out in creating her enchantments. Though what she used as an anchor for them he had no idea.

Flashes went off from the stands as the reporters recorded the champion's work for the evening papers.

"Now, the respective Mediwitches from each school will give their champions the pepper up-potion. Each potion has been checked by a neutral potions master to ensure they are only what they should be."

Harry smiled as Madame Pomphrey came up to him with the smoking dose. "An interesting boat Mr. Potter, I have never seen the like."

"It is more of a polynesian style Madame, but I think it will do the job." He replied before swigging back the potion with a grimace.

She nodded, a stern smile gracing her lips. "Just so long as you refrain from injuring yourself Mr. Potter, i do not care how strange your boat is."

She quickly moved on to Nott, giving him a dose as well before retreating back to the stands.

"Champions! Prepare to launch!" Bagman cried once all of them had taken their doses of potion.

Harry stood just off of his boat, legs bent as he prepared to push it into the lake.

"Launch!"

With a hard shove, the trimaran glided into the water, Harry leaping onto it with a telekinesis boosted jump.

A second later and he placed a hand on the wind array, a trickle of magic leaving his hand.

Almost immediately, the boat lurched forward in the water as a heavy wind filled the sail.

Slowly increasing the magic to the array exponentially increased his speed, until he was cruising at a respectable 45 knots (83 km/h) However, one thing he had not considered as he was designing his boat was that the light weight would lead to some serious chop as he crossed the lake at a blistering pace. He cast sticking charms on his feet to anchor to him to the boat, and a bright blue spell flew just to the right of his boat, sinking into the water and creating a small explosion.

He cursed as the tremor created a series of waves that forced him slightly off course, but he quickly corrected it by shifting the rudder a slight angle, focusing on the wooden platform in the distance. .

He was not alone in his pace. Nott was already ahead of him by over fifty meters, and his lead was slowly increasing as he moved with the confidence of an experienced sailor. However Aleksandra seeming to be quickly catching up to him as her golem rowers swept their oars through the water with inhuman speed.

A frown crossed his face as he looked at the wind array. He could force his boat to go even faster, but it would be increasingly hard to control it unless he added some weight, which would defeat the whole purpose.

Unless he could use his telekinesis to stabilize the boat at the same time?

He looked behind to Aleksandra who was very close to overtaking him, and clenched his fists. No way was he going to let her win after all the belittling things she and her school had said behind his back.

With his right hand on the array, he placed his left on the wooden panel holding the array. With his mind's eye he visualized the hull of his boat and coated it with telekinetic energy, flooding the wind array with his magic at the same time.

Almost immediately the sail grew completely taut, his boat lurching forward at an increasing speed. And without warning, the water just under him lurched, his boat nearly tipping over.

It took all of his focus to keep from capsizing, and he withdrew his right hand from the wind array, leaving him dead in the water in the moments it took to right his boat.

But those few moments were enough for both Aleksandra and Amelie to pass him, the Durmstrang champion smirking arrogantly. "Better luck next task Potter!"

Even though it was horribly cliche, her taunt made him angry, especially when he realized his near-capsizing had been caused by a spell that hit the water. He flooded the array with magic again, more so than the first time. The acceleration made him dizzy for a second, but he was still far behind the two of them, gaining slowly.

And the worst part was that he would need to stop at the island, which would force him to restart from zero. Already the two foreign champions had stopped and were returning to their boats.

Nott was on the other side of the track, heading toward the finish. There was no way he could get out of last place if he lost all his speed stopping at the platform

How could he keep his speed while grabbing the tablet with his hand?

He was only twenty seconds away from the raft when he realized what to do. With a muttered spell he created a twenty meter coil of thick rope and charmed it unbreakable before he tied it to the starboard hull. Holding the other end of the rope in his hand he leaped to the platform, transfiguring a thick round post in the center of the platform and tying the rope so that it rotated freely around the post.

The rope pulled taut a few seconds later, pulling his boat in a tight circle on the outside of the platform while he grabbed his tablet and leaped again, using his band to calculate exactly where the boat would end up

The deck shook slightly as he landed, and a muttered word cut the rope binding the mast to the platform before it would cut off his speed, and it only took a minor course correction to turn back in the direction of the finish line.

Harry realized he was grinning a bit maniacally, he had not been expecting for that to actually work, but it had, and he had retained roughly half of his earlier speed instead of starting from zero like he had feared.

With the boost from his insane stunt, he was quickly catching up to the two foreign champions.

It was a direct line to the finish, but the water was growing increasingly choppy from the wakes of the two impossibly fast sailboats in front of him. How he wished that he knew more about stability charms.

He pulled to the right, dangerously close to the out-of-bounds line created by the buoys, but the chop was much less in this area, allowing him to pour on the speed. But he still wasn't going fast enough, for every bit of speed he pushed the greater the air resistance on his boat, another thing he had failed to account for when building it.

But that was easily fixable. Thinking of the first task, he raised his wand. Like with magic, he had discovered in the last task how much easier it was to focus his telekinetic energy through it. A cone shaped repelling force of telekinetic energy materialized in front of his boat, diverting the air and reducing the wind resistance to almost zero. The rapid jump in speed was gratifying, and he smirked as the boost allowed him to pass first Amelie, whose head jerked toward him in utter surprise, then Aleksandra, who furiously shot spells at him once she realized he was overtaking her. .

Her actions were pointless, as the enchantments woven into the hull of his boat dispersed her magic into the air without any effect.

It was with a triumphant grin that he came in second, removing his hand from the wind array while turning the mainsail to maximize the braking effect.

He managed to hold steady a mere thirty meters from where Nott was resting his boat. The older boy looked at him, then the wake his speed run had caused before nodding. "Not too shabby Potter."

Massaging his head to disperse the headache that came from splitting his attention so much, Harry nodded. "Thanks, and good job getting first."

An arrogant smile crossed Nott's face, but he at least had enough decorum to keep from saying anything.

Amelie came in third, followed seconds later by Aleksandra, who had lost much of her speed trying to stop Harry from passing, and was visibly fuming at losing to him.

"Well done champions, very well done indeed." Bagman's voice was a jolt from the post-task euphoria, directing all four of the champions to look toward the stands.

-Nott wins this one, with Harry coming second due to a spell using the water around his boat to flip him over from Amelie. He is not happy at all about this

-harry weaves an enchantment for absorbing magic around the hull of his ship, knowing that the other champions might try to sink him to take him out of the race. This leads to some surprise from Nott and Aleksandra, though (french champion) is suitably impressed by his skill in creating first a diamond and then an advanced enchantment at only 13 years of age.

Scene where Harry and Moros decide that this is his last year at hogwarts, the majority of the school, except for his house, has turned on him, and they believe that they have learned all they can from the school, they will continue with their plans for the wraith. Harry keeps in touch with his circle of friends, giving them each a lantean artifact disguised as a magical one, which will convert the thoughts they specifically think into the band and send it as a message.

Moros starts designing their first ship after watching Star Wars at Harry's insistence. He is interested by the shape of the imperial star destroyers, as a modified version of that shape has much potential for fighting off multiple aggressors while still capable of firing all weapons at the same target

Maybe do this scene?

Moros creates an advanced android dummy that can fire spells through a wand facimile, though faster than a normal wizard. Harry uses this to train before the third task

Third Task

Obstacle course, not a maze, as no one from the audience would be able to see what was happening

The moment he grabbed the cup, he recognized the pulling sensation of a portkey. Though surprised that the judges would use one so frivolously, he mentally shrugged. Saved him some walking time.

It was only when he arrived in a location that was decidedly not the reward stage that he tensed. Something was very wrong here.

Patram, I have been taken away from the tournament by a portkey, can you beam me out of here? He sent along the band.

Just as he sent the message, he felt an incredibly powerful field of magic surrounding him, nearly suffocating him in its strength. After a moment, the feeling of power dimmed, seeming to concentrate in a hardened wall for over a hundred meters in every direction.

Confrontation with Voldemort, Harry is trapped by anti-apparition wards

Harry manages to completely scramble his mind, but does not kill him. In essence, this ability nullifies voldemort as a threat, though Moros, feeling quite uncharitable toward the monster, disintegrates him to be sure. His followers are also taken, and Moros looks at them before removing their ability to do magic, then stranding them on a small island in the caribbean with barely any food or shelter Without magic, none of their families or elves would be able to find them.

Triwizard Tournament is in third year instead of fourth, Fleur is still champion of French school, but Krum is not, too focused on training for the world cup next year, so a 17 year old durmstrang student takes his place. Harry is forced into the tournament, which leads him to speaking to basilisk for help, not knowing if he is anywhere strong enough for the tournament. She suggests a ritual.

-Voldemort used a similar ritual to this one, a dark version that also increases aggressiveness

-gets this from slytherin's hidden bookroom, which was barred to any that were not "pure of heart" this is in place of the black family library.

Harry continues in his studies, working further on the study of what makes magic tic

Merlin, who as far as he knew thought the stargate was buried in egypt, is unpleasantly surprised when he learns that it is under the control of the american military(in 1995), and begins creating a monitoring system to learn more about what they are doing with the technology; he does not take it because he knows that there is no way, short of disabling every camera and replacing it, which requires an insane amount of naquada that he does not want to waste on it

Merlin creates a cloaked probe to send through the stargate, which will explore the network and gather data for a good world with the resources they need in order to start building ships, preferably a system with a large asteroid belt. This is where paradise will come from….

Harry looks into science fiction novels for ideas about long lasting technology for generations to come. He wants to make a new home for the wizards, one where they do not need to fear being discovered, but can protect them from the horrors of space with extreme prejudice. He asks if Hermione knows any really good science fiction books, and though she is a little surprised by the request, she sends a message home asking of what they thought were some good classic science fiction. Her father mentions ringworld and red planet, which is where he gets the idea first for a ring, but then logically expands it to a sphere completely surrounding a star after a conversation with merlin

The ancients that left earth millions of years ago are responsible for the 'missing link' between homo erectus and homo sapiens, their destruction of everything near human life through the dakara superweapon, then reseeding, made the link nonexistent.

-ships have variable fire rate: fire faster the closer the target, and slower fire rate but higher velocity for each shot to make time to hit identical across all ranges, about .05 seconds

Assuming projectile speed of 60% speed of light at fastest, this is 179,875,474.8 m/s

=179,875.4748km/s

Multiply by .05 = 8993773.74 m = 8993.77374 km/s say 9000km for ease of use

Fire rate at max distance is one shot every six seconds however these shots have a far higher amount of damage given their velocity:

At 3000km rate = 1 per 2 second

1000km = 1.5 per second

100km = 16 per second This is maximal rate. 960 rounds per minute

With the explosive shells each having 20 megatons of force, about the same energy as the annihilation of 1kg of matter

Speed is 100km/.05

= 2000km/s

KE = ½ mv^2

40 = mv^2

v^2 = 4000000

v at ,max distance = 179,875.4748km/s

v^2 = 32,355,186,434.52544 = 8000 times the energy of shell at minimum range, or 160000 megatons

Divide this by 2

80,000 megatons

= 128% of all solar energy hitting earth/minute in a single point

This is per shot

10 shots per minute at max dist = 800,000 megatons

-moros and harry start replicating magic during the summer, having figured out how, use the killing curse lesson to study the killing curse, find a way to prevent it. Learn that if the subject is put into stasis, the killing curse cannot target the cells, as it basically causes all cellular activity in a body to stop;, as there is no activity to stop, if the outer shield detects the curse, the wearer of the armor is put into stasis, appearing to be dead until the armor senses there is no more danger. Saves Cedric's life, Harry is very relieved, hugging the boy tightly.

-ship shells that warp space around them like portkeys to increase speed?

-harry gifts cedric with an armor designed to resist magic to a great degree, has internal shield

Idea of emitter on armor that creates a momentum arresting field stronger as a projectile gets closer to the wearer, armor also has space-folding module, based on apparition, this will later be incorporated into ships for tactical advantages it can bring, no good for long distance. Finally, armor has beacon for picking up wearer's signature in high energy environments

When have more magicals, have a sensor based on wards that detects their loyalty, their suits no longer work if they have decided to change sides, and this fact is not advertised, otherwise people might be able to find a way around the protections

-stargates cannot be used to clone a person, for some reason trying to recreate another copy with all the same details, memories, and thoughts causes a massive backlash, as if there is only supposed to be one version of that person in existence. Not the same as loki cloning jack, as these are not formed from cells but the energy of the universe itself, which is what the wizards call magic.

Harry creates a machine that can be used for carving runes in large scale, amplifying his intent while using energy to carve the runes, both of which are needed for said runes to work.