I wish I owned any rights to the characters below. Unfortunately I don't so I still have to work my normal job.

Sorry for the delay in getting this out, unfortunately Life got in the way. Thought I was going well, then the next thing you know it has been six months since you posted an update to your story and you are looking at it going, Huh? Also my Muse insisted on me getting something else off my chest before it would let me wrap up this chapter as indicated by the other posts on this site tonight. Anyway, hope you enjoy and I should be updating more regularly.

However, please note, even if I take a while to update, my stories will never be abandoned.

Hogwarts – Headmasters Office.

Albus was troubled. It had been three days since the Weighing of the Wands and the revelations bought about. While the three nominal champions were no real surprise, it was Harry Potter who had created the greatest stir. First with his actions towards Rita Skeeter and the Daily Prophet along with the fact that there were no other media representatives present, but that was followed up by the revelation that he used a staff instead of a Wand, and what a staff it was. Albus had never heard of a creation like young Harry used. No one in Great Britain had been powerful enough to need a staff in centuries, even he touted as the most powerful Wizard in Britain did not need a staff. That meant that young Harry, as he was now, was more powerful than Albus was. It also meant that currently, the fourth champion was the most powerful Wizard that Albus knew of currently residing in Great Britain.

As the former head of the ICW Albus had been aware of staff users in other countries, but as long as they did not come to Britain then he did not look into it too much. He was still the most powerful, and with the boost he received from holding the Elder Wand he was planning on remaining the most powerful. However that was no longer the case. Firstly, The Morrigan had taken the Elder Wand from him in the meeting on Halloween, and now there was a Staff User walking the halls of Hogwarts.

Albus had still not made the link between the downturn in observing the ancient rites like Samhain and Beltine and the drop in the number of powerful magic users within Great Britain. A downturn that he had helped and pushed for stating that the rites were Dark and offensive to the new "Muggleborns" joining their society. Even the families that still followed the old ways could not practise properly as any hint of them undertaking the rites would see them either heavily fined or thrown in prison for practising 'Dark Arts'.

Now Albus had to rethink his plans. He had gambled heavily when sending the eldest Potter to live with his muggle relatives. He had known he would have a hard life he just did not think it would be as hard as it turned out. Then when he was bought back into the Wizarding World and Hogwarts, he would look to his Parents and Albus as saviours, thus ensuring that the Potters would continue to back him and his plans.

However now the Potters wanted very little to do with him, only taking their positions as Hogwarts Professors when Daniel had turned 11 and had gotten his Hogwarts Letter. If they didn't have positions within the school then they would not have allowed him to come, and that could not be allowed. Albus needed to guide the saviour of Wizarding Great Britain and how could he do that if he didn't have access to him. However, with James and Lily working at the school he had not had as much access as he had hoped. Sure, he had managed to ensure he got sorted into Gryfindor and his other little tests in the last few years had helped, but not as much as he had hoped. He had gone to his Parents with both the Philosophers Stone test rather than trying to save the stone himself. And when Miss Weasley had bought the Diary into the school Daniel had been the one to notice and take it to his father rather than bringing it to Albus. As a result, others now knew of the lengths Voldemort had taken to stay alive. This was knowledge that Albus had not wanted to get out yet as it went against the Greater Good for people to have too much information and not rely on him to lead them. The fact that he was now banned from holding any posts other than Headmaster by the gods didn't help, but he could work around that by controlling from the shadows rather than wearing the 'Crown' himself.

This was definitely not going the way he had planned and he needed to work to get everything back on track…. For the Greater Good of course.

Hogwarts – Potter Suite

The Potters were sitting around the table in their suite. They had been doing it a lot since Harry had arrived at. Now they were thinking about what they had seen during the Wand Weighing Ceremony. Not only was Harry stronger than anyone had expected, but he was the first wizard from England to utilise a staff in over a hundred years.

"How is this possible?" asked Daniel. "How can he be so powerful?"

"We don't know Daniel" replied his mother. "We have taken a stand back approach to trying to rebuild a relationship with Harry. Our good intentions with entrusting him to Albus for Protection were obviously not best thought out. Now Harry has no love for us due to our earlier actions. However he is not against us at the moment and we would like to keep things that way so that we can try and build things with him slowly."

"But what about us?" came the voice of the youngest in the room. Little Amber Potter had been happy to find out that she had another Big Brother. However at the urging of her parents she hadn't tried to visit him since he had come to Hogwarts. All she wanted to do was talk to him and see if he would be a good big brother or not.

"From what I have seen so far sweet heart. Harry does not have any animosity towards you and your brother. However he doesn't know you at all. We don't know what he knows about our family or England. After the first task we are going to try and have a sit down with him to try and get to know him and see if we can have any type of relationship with him." James said.

"But he should be proud to be the brother of the Boy-Who-Lived." Exclaimed Daniel. "Anyone would want to be part of our family for the prestige that is bought by being related to me"

Lily looked at James with annoyance. This was the attitude that had turned most of the student body against her son. She had tried to curb his arrogance, but James had not been as firm. Often outright contradicting what she was trying to do.

"From what I have seen Daniel, he doesn't care about the Boy-Who-Lived. If you approach him with that attitude you could quite well find yourself shut out and ignored." Lily told him. "He has grown up outside of England and Europe so he might not be as aware of your story as the other schools are."

Amber had grown up initially thinking that she only had the one older brother until that fateful day when Professor McGonagall had come with the unaddressed letter. When she had found out that she had an even older brother she hoped that he would play with her and spend time with her unlike Daniel. All he ever did was make fun of her for not being famous like him. He always said he was doing more important thing and didn't have time for her. Her mother tried to spend time with her, but was constantly pulled into things by her father that revolved around Daniel.

When they had found out that her brother would not be coming home, some of the happiness had left the Potter home. It wasn't until much later that Amber would understand why that was, all she had known was that he wouldn't be there and she was disappointed.

Now her Oldest brother was found to be alive and had been living in Japan all this time. As soon as she had seen him walk into the great hall she had felt that here was someone that she would be happy to call her big brother. As she was her mothers' daughter, she had gone to research in the library as soon as she could to try and find out what the crests on their clothes had meant. Unfortunately there was not a lot of information available in the books she could access. It had only been when she had found on older history book from the 1700's that she had been able to properly identify the crests on the clothes worn by her brother and his party. She couldn't understand why the information was buried so much though. It appeared to be important information for everyone to have so why was it so hard to find.

"Will Harry want to meet us, or will he stay in Japan with the Shogun and Yokai?" Amber asked of her parents.

"What do you mean Amber?" asked Lily

"Well the people that Harry came with. I looked up the crests on their clothes and they are associated with the ruler of magical Japan and the Yokai Association in Japan. If Harry is involved with them will he want to come home at all? I would like to meet my big brother"

"All we can do sweety is hope. Unlike other people we have given Harry space. We will approach him after the first task about meeting with the family to discuss things. Hopefully he will not shut us out completely, but we will have to see." Said Lily.

Lily was referring to the people within Hogwarts who had been harassing Harry and his friends since their arrival. They did not feel that a Scion of a Noble Family should be associating with Foreign Riff Raff and in the case of the Yokai, Animals.

Harry and Akane had laughed at their attempts, but you could tell it was starting to wear thin as they had started limiting the time they spent in the common areas of the castle. They regularly stayed within their rooms and the training area provided by Albus, often eating in their suite rather than joining the other in the Great Hall.

"I hope so, I would like to meet my biggest brother." Replied Amber.

As the silence from Ambers' statement lingered, Lily suddenly looked at James with dread and exclaimed "James, The Contract?"

Harrys Suite

It was unbelievable. The sheep of Wizarding Britain were so stuck in their belief that their way was the best and only way that they had essentially cut themselves off from the rest of the wizarding world. Looking through what they classed as Restricted/Dark Magic in the Hogwarts Library showed just how far they had fallen. All the rituals to the Gods had been banned due to some needing a sacrifice, never mind that the sacrifice was food or material possessions. None of the Rituals required anything that could be considered dark, but because they contained the word Sacrifice no one had thought to check what was required and so had ruled them as Dark. It was maddening. They would have to go outside of Europe come Yule to conduct their normal worship and again during the next year until they could leave after the tournament. And they wondered why their magic was in decline. They had also seen that Harry would have to keep some of his abilities a secret as they were considered dark in England and grounds for possible imprisonment. They could just see them waiting for him to complete the tournament and then arresting him on some trumped up charge so they could either A. Keep him here or B. Send him to Azkabahn.

They were currently sat around the table in their suite discussing what Harry would do for the First Task. They had already identified that the organisers had bought in Dragons for the task and a little judicious snooping in the forest had identified the breeds and also exactly what the task was. The Champions would be required to retrieve a golden egg from within the clutch of a Nesting Mother Dragons real eggs. A daunting task for most, but something Harry felt he could do easily. This was mostly due to one of his trainers as he was growing up.

Harry never forgot that his healing had required both Amaterasu and Ryuu to accomplish. And while Amaterasu was a regular visitor while he was recovering and as he grew, Ryuu had only started coming around regularly since his powers had started to mature. From Amaterasu Harry got an affinity for Fire Magics allowing him to bend fire to his will. Even Fiendfyre was no match for his control over fire. From Ryuu however, Harry inherited Dragon Magic. This was perhaps the most closely guarded secret within the family group. Dragon Magic was a magic all of its own and worked to its own set of rules. One thing they had been able to identify early on was that all dragons would sense this about Harry and would defer to him in some way unless they were more powerful. Even if they were more powerful they would not try to harm him as they could sense where the Dragon Blood came from and did not want to get on Ryuus' bad side. The other side effect was that Harry could talk to Dragons. This was different to his ability to talk to snakes as Parseltongue and Dragon Speech were two different languages.

The current plan was for Harry to try and get close to the Dragons while they were still in the forest and explain to them what was happening so that while they would put on a show, they would not try and permanently injure the other champions.

All those gathered around the table could still not believe that they were planning on using the real eggs for the tournament. They could not raise their concerns prior to the event as that would show that they knew in advance about what they event would entail. They would however be raising their concerns before the event while getting their briefing on what they event entailed. While snooping to identify what was entailed in a task was a time honoured tradition of the tournament, admitting that you had was not and was actually against the rules (just another reminder of how fucked up the rules for the tournament were. Cheating wasn't against the rules, admitting to it was.) Harry was already going to be contacting Ryuu about this anyway in an attempt to find out how the English had managed to secure the four dragons anyway. The Common Welsh Green and the Swedish Short Snout were not so much of a concern. The Chinese Fireball and the Hungarian Horntail however were both endangered species and were protected under international law. There should have been no way for them to be included in this.

"I can't wait to be rid of this backwards country" groused Harry for what felt like the hundredth time since the Wand Weighing ceremony. Not only was he being vilified in the Daily Prophet for his stance on the Press coverage but they were trying to make him out to be an up and coming Dark Lord due to the fact that he was powerful enough to need a Staff.

"Patience Harry" said his father. "We just have to put up with this until the first task, then we can head home for a couple of weeks until we are needed back for their Christmas Ball. After that we can look at how we want to handle things in between tasks."

"Thanks for the reminder Dad" said Harry as he turned to Akane. " They are going to insist that I be present for the ball as a Champion and this will require me to have a date. Would you do me the honor of being my date for the Yule Ball Akane?"

Akane didn't quite know what to think. She had long known that he feelings for Harry went deeper than those of a friend and bodyguard. Now here was her wish being handed to her on a silver platter, but she didn't know if it was because she was convenient and he didn't want to have to put up with the English trying to hound him for a date or because he truly wanted to take her to the ball.

"Why me Harry?" she asked. She wanted to know why he had chosen her.

"Because you are my friend, you know how to behave at these events and because I can not think of a single other person that I would like to take to a ball besides you. You have been there with me from just after I came to live with Dad and I would like to see if we can take our friendship further" replied Harry.

Smiling Akane rose to her feet and walked around the table. Placing a gentle kiss on Harrys' lips she replied "Yes Harry, I would love to be your date to the ball,"

Once she said that Nico squealed like a little girl and jumped up to hug Akane and drag her off to the girls room to talk leaving a bewildered Harry behind, not sure what had just happened. This was further cemented by Riku handing Sanji a bag that clinked as he passed it over. Looking between the two Harry raised one eyebrow in question.

"Nothing son" said Sanji " Just the results of a little friendly wager as to when you would get your head out of your arse and ask that girl out. I will need to contact her father and Yosaka as well so they can finalise the pools among the palace staff and the Yokai."

Harry couldn't believe what he was hearing. There had been a betting pool on when he and Akane would be getting together, and everyone knew about it but him and probably Akane.

Sometimes the world just wasn't fair.