Chapter 259: Leafy Distractions
If you want to support me check out my patréon at https://www.patréon.com/athassprkr
I tend to upload drafts of early chapters on there to get people's opinions of them so you can read up to 20 chapters ahead as a bonus.
I would like to thank my beta, Awdyr, for his help in this chapter.
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7 November 1994, Beauxbatons, France
To say that the previous week was confusing would have been an understatement. Truth be told, meeting Lily Potter changed things. She had always been this invisible figure in Harry's life, having shaped his life in very significant ways even without him having met her once.
She had been the one who had killed his father, who had massacred thousands of people to save his life, assuming she was telling the truth, of course. There was a very real possibility that the woman was lying. The problem was that he couldn't get a good read on her and that was frustrating, to say the least.
That chaotic aura that hid her magic stopped him from using his Arcane Hearing to do so. There were still some echoes, even then, but they were faint and were probably there thanks to the resurrection stone. He would need to master the stone before agreeing to anything permanent, just to make sure that he wouldn't be fooled by the woman.
She could definitely control her micro-expressions. Harry noticed that the way her face moved was too perfect in showing the appropriate emotions. The woman hadn't been fully honest with him, not that he expected her to be. He only wanted to know if she would betray him without a second thought like she did with his father.
Harry couldn't help but make even further connections between her and Tom Riddle. The way their expressions were so smooth, so perfected. The way they hid from his Arcane Hearing, one by melding into the environment, and another by creating a chaotic field of some sort to overwhelm any sort of magical detection.
Yes, Lily Potter would have probably become a Dark Lady if the position hadn't already been filled.
As much as he wanted to, he couldn't trust her. This was a woman who had fooled the world, acting as a loving wife to James Potter. He would not be her next victim. Honestly, if it had been anyone else, he wouldn't have taken the risk, but the truth was that he needed the support.
Harry couldn't afford to have another enemy. Dumbledore, Grindelwald, and Voldemort were more than enough, and the manpower behind Lily was very impressive. It was scary, really, the fact that she had an army of enhanced werewolves at her beck and call, and the fucking Department of Mysteries probably wrapped around her little finger.
And it would be nice to not be alone anymore.
He knew it was a shitty thing to say, but the only person he had met who could keep up with him was Tom Riddle, and even then, he had tried to kill him – and no, Dumbledore and Grindelwald didn't count.
Hermione could theoretically count, but she felt more like a stranger, and their relationship was weird enough as it was, and she had definitely chosen to stick to Neville. Harry didn't know if it was her choice or just an order from the Department of Mysteries. Either way, he respected the fact that she was doing a good job at handling Neville Longbottom.
Now that he thought about it, Lily's influence over the department meant that there was a very real possibility that she was the one in control of Hermione. Well, that's an uncomfortable thought, to say the least.
Nevertheless, Lily was a master of Blood magic and Alchemy at the very least, and those were two fields of magic that Harry did not know. She had an instinct for magic that was pretty close to Harry's and could actually contribute to his magical development…
If only he could afford to trust her…
Harry shook his head deciding to focus on the first task of the tournament. It was a straightforward thing. It was a race in a forest with an unknown finish line, and they could get to the finish line either by going around randomly, finding some clues in the forest, or just getting a medallion from each school to get to the destination.
They had probably included the last part to make it so that there would be more duels in the task, to entertain the masses. Watching a scavenger hunt for hours would be boring, to say the least.
That would backfire on them heavily because Harry had a plan.
Of course, so did the rest of the Hogwarts Champions. Honestly, Harry was getting tired of hearing them argue about what to do.
Roger Davies was practically yelling, "The logical thing would be to split up and cover more ground. We could do it in pairs or something and find ways to speak to each other."
"For fuck's sake Davies, that's the stupidest idea I've ever heard. I know the prize is nice and everything, but if we don't do this as a team, then we're definitely going to lose," Angelina Johnson growled.
Diggory seemed to agree with her, "Look, let's just agree to split the winnings between us or fight over it if we win. But, we shouldn't lower our chances of completing the task. We'd be better off just going as a group and hunting down other champions for their medallions. It would be a lot quicker that way."
Lucien Bole just looked bored, but Harry saw through him. The older boy did not like Harry since he had humiliated him in the duelling tournament the previous year, but they were cordial enough. The older Slytherin definitely wanted the diary, if only for the monetary value. He would probably betray everyone if he could get the diary for himself, as unlikely as that was.
Harry decided that he was done humouring those idiots and discreetly turned himself invisible before walking away. He wasn't going to let an opportunity like getting the Diary slide easily. Normally, he would have just gone with the flow, hoping in vain, hoping that he wouldn't really expose his capabilities publicly.
He was done hiding.
Well, he was done hiding how good he was. He wasn't going to display his full arsenal in front of the public. Honestly, if he could have figured out where the finish line was from the beginning, he would have already gone there without fighting anyone. Unfortunately, he could not sense anything particularly saturated in magic. The forest was more than magical enough that hundreds of places had enough magic to be the finish line. He had to do it the hard way then…
Harry walked quickly, while invisible, towards the nearest songs he could hear. With every step, he warped space slowly, giving the appearance of him sprinting stealthily. Huh, it was the Spanish Champions.
They seemed to have followed Diggory's lead and decided to stick together. Troublesome, but not impossible.
Thinking back, he remembered what he knew about magical development in Spain. It was very similar to magic in Britain, with deep roots in Latin-based wand magic, but their curses were some of the best in the world. They were based on old Arabic curses, which was a field of magic that literally came out of nowhere centuries prior which the Spanish cleverly adapted for wand use.
It was very likely that they had cursed their own medallions.
Slowly a plan formulated in Harry's mind. Fighting all five of the champions at once was just wasteful. He could do it easily enough, but it wasn't necessary. He only needed to get one medallion.
Harry waved his wand and deafened his steps. With another wave, a stone was transfigured into a wolf, which he commanded to move to the other side of the group and start growling aggressively.
It didn't take long for the wolf to start growling and Harry heard one of the champions speak in Spanish, "Something is out there. It might be a creature or a clue. Samuel, stay here and guard our camp. Sophia, cover us. The rest, come with me to investigate."
Harry grinned as he saw them move warily towards the transfigured wolf's location. Harry slowly walked towards the back of the champion who had stayed behind as a guard and cast a Confundus charm.
The spell was one of the basic charms taught to OWL students for the purpose of confusing muggles. It wasn't really all that strong, just a small hypnotic suggestion that had to be in character. A muggle did not want to believe in magic, and so Confundus charms were especially effective against them. What Harry did was get the boy to daydream a bit, to not pay attention.
With a wave of his wand, the medallion fell off the boy's neck, and Harry quickly analysed whatever magic it held using his Arcane Hearing. As expected, there was a curse. He quickly dispelled it. Those lessons with Daphne were really paying off.
He transfigured another rock which he made look like the medallion and tried to make the magic appear similar to the original one. He only snuck in a small surprise in case anyone tried to use it.
And just like that, he snuck back again, and he dispelled the charm on the unsuspecting boy. He looked around and noticed that the students were planning on attacking the wolf, so he commanded it to run as quickly as he could. A couple of minutes later, the other champions returned. Samuel, the boy who had guarded their camp asked, "What was it?"
"Just a wolf. It ran away as soon as it saw us. What about you? Did you see anything interesting?"
"Nothing. Everything has been quiet…"
Harry smirked as he noticed the rest of his plan being put into effect. It would not need his input for the rest. Now, that was one done, and five others remaining.
He quickly moved on to the next group of champions. Huh, this group had decided to split up, since only two students were walking around.
From the looks of them, they appeared to be two of the Greek Champions. Before he could formulate a plan, Harry felt a wave of magic coming his way and dodged out of the way. A beam of Darkness obliterated the spot he was at a couple of seconds prior.
How had they figured out he was there?
From the looks of it, one of them, a dark-haired boy, was looking at him directly even after his evasion and spoke up in accentuated English, "Come out now. There's no use hiding from me."
Harry focused on the spell and found out it was some kind of detection spell that he had never seen before. He hadn't even seen this type of magic before. No, it was still strangely familiar… It reminded him of the stone… Oh, so some kind of soul detection magic then.
He really needed to create some anti-sensing spells. He had relied on his cloak for so long, and without it, he found himself slightly unprepared now that he wasn't allowed anything but his wand for the task.
Inconvenient, but not really that big of a deal.
Deciding that stealth just wasn't the way forward, he walked slowly towards the clearing where the two other boys stood, revealing himself fully.
They seemed amused at his presence. The muscled blonde boy snickered openly, "Oh, it's the kid. Let me guess. The other Hogwarts Champions got themselves eliminated and you ran away or something… I knew that standards there had fallen, but I never expected you to be the only one left."
Harry didn't answer, he simply focused on the fight. Two opponents. He needed to do it as quietly as possible. The skinny boy had to go first. His soul sensing meant that his crest could have things that Harry couldn't anticipate. The secondary threat was the muscle boy. He hadn't shown any magic yet, but Harry could almost hear the lightning coursing through his veins. So, a lightning elemental specialist, then… Harry knew what to expect there.
Huh, so take out the first one with an attack then. It was unlikely that the blond would attack first; lightning was really bright and could have adverse effects on darkness magic. Their stances confirmed Harry's theory. So, considering the duo, the darkness manipulator would start first. That would be enough cover for a small attack from the back. The blonde would then probably retaliate in a panic, allowing him the time to redirect any attack towards his ally.
The blonde took Harry's silence as some kind of joke and spoke up, "This is just sad. Just take him out quickly."
The boy sent a beam of darkness towards Harry, who shielded against it with a beam of light and conjured some ice spikes with wings that he animated to attack the boy from the back.
From the outside, it looked like a battle between a stream of magic and a shield. Of course, that was until the boy yelled out in pain as Harry's conjured spikes attacked him. Harry noticed the wide eyes of the blond boy who sent a bolt of lightning at Harry blindly. Harry used this to warp space discreetly and make the attack hit his teammate instead, making it look like he miscast.
The bolt of lightning had electrocuted the pale boy, knocking him out.
Harry allowed himself a small smirk at the horrified look on the blonde's face, which morphed into pure anger. The boy leapt at Harry with a sword of lightning in hand, which Harry countered with a staff of ice. The Greek boy didn't notice the small runes engraved on the ice staff, which lit up from the lightning sword's energy, sending him flying back.
The boy used lightning to somehow create constructs to land harmlessly and actually flew towards Harry with a giant beam of lightning in his hand. It was probably a lethal attack, but the boy was too committed…
Unfortunately for the poor Greek champion, he went through Harry as if he wasn't there, and crashed into the rock behind him.
Harry snickered as he cast a stunning charm at the boy's back. Illusions really were underrated.
With that done, he checked both medallions to make sure they weren't cursed or fakes.
They weren't. He picked up both medallions and put them in his pocket.
That was two done, and four to go.
So far things were going well, but Harry knew better than to hope that things would stay that way. After all, with Dumbledore involved, things rarely were so simple.
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AN: I know the last chapters were a bit on the boring side, so I'm making up for it with this one. Please let me know what you think or if you have any suggestions.
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If you want to support me check out my patréon at https://www.patréon.com/athassprkr
I tend to upload drafts of early chapters on there to get people's opinions of them so you can read up to 20 chapters ahead as a bonus.
Thank you guys for your support in these hard times.