16 Chapter 16

Early October.

When Harry had first given her the task of finding out how muggleborns were viewed outside of Britain, Penny had guessed that it might take a while to find that out. What she hadn't expected was the sheer amount of obstructionism she'd encountered simply on account of her blood status.

More than one Ministry bureoucrat had outright refused to meet with her or simply continued to push back the date of their meeting until she gave up. The worst by far had been that Umbridge woman that was temporarily in charge of the Department of International Magical Cooperation, who had actually deigned to meet with her but spent the entire time making unsubtle insinuations that mudbloods had no business even living, much less asking questions in the Ministry. She'd thought that Harry had been exaggerating when he'd described how he'd been tempted to murder her within five seconds of their meeting at the World Cup, but now she fully understood the impulse.

To make matters even worse, Percy had been there too, having apparently been appointed the pink toad's personal secretary, no doubt on account of his pureblood status and ability to shove his nose so far up someone's arse that he could smell their breakfast. He'd stood behind Umbridge in silent support, chest puffed up self-importantly.

Penny really had to wonder how she had misjudged Percy's true nature so badly at Hogwarts. He'd seemed so reliable at the time, but now it was clear that he simply worshipped authority. She knew that he didn't even buy into the pureblood propaganda, but was quite clearly willing to go along with it if that was the way things were, the useless jerk.

Either way, the Ministry of Magic had essentially been a dead end as far as information went. It had taken her weeks just to learn how to get in contact with the ambassadors from the other magical nations, and even that had been learned from some random DIMC employee that she'd accosted in the hallway. Even then she had still needed to drop Harry's name before they would give her the time of day, something that she had avoided doing previously, purely out of a desire to be talked to as a human being in her own right. Penny had seen enough to know she'd be lucky to find one pureblood in twenty that wasn't a prejudiced arsehole, but she was a stubborn woman and quietly simmering in outrage at being looked down upon by small minded bigots that were determined to stay ignorant at all costs just so that they could feel important.

In any case, she was finally going to be talking to the North American ambassador. She was a bit nervous about that, having never really imagined herself talking to people like this, but how bad could it be? Just ask a few polite questions and see how things went. If he turned out to be as bad as the people in the British Ministry upon learning that she was a muggleborn then it was probably safe to conclude that the US wizards and witches were as bigoted as the ones here and if he wasn't then she would learn even more.

It didn't really stop the nervous flutter in her stomach when she was called into the man's office, but she pasted a smile on her face and went in regardless.

"Ms. Clearwater." John Boyer said in greeting, shaking her hand and gesturing towards a chair in front of his desk. "I understand you had some questions for me?"

"Yes, Mr. Boyer, I do." Penny said, arranging her robes so that she could sit comfortably. She'd barely worn them since Harry had given her a job but felt that this conversation warranted it. Now she was just feeling silly since the ambassador himself notably wasn't wearing robes, but a somewhat old fashioned looking suit. If she didn't know he was a wizard, she would have pegged him as forty-or-so-year old man with dark brown hair, pale skin and a fondness for formal wear, though he was probably closer to sixty.

She took that as a good sign, knowing how obsessed the blood purists were about their traditions. They wouldn't have been caught dead dressed like that.

"Ask away." Boyer said with a diplomatic smile.

"Well… I suppose there's no way to ease into this, but I'd like to know how muggleborns are treated in magical North America." Penny said akwardly.

Boyer's face went momentarily blank and he leaned back into his chair. "That's an interesting question, Ms. Clearwater. Why would you want to know something like that?"

Penny fidgeted slightly at his neutral tone, wondering if she'd just given some kind of offense or something. She was definitely way out of her comfort zone here. "I'm not sure if you're aware, but British muggleborns like me face a lot of discrimination on account of not having magical parents. My employer asked me to investigate if that's the norm everywhere or if magical Britain was an outlier."

"And who is it that you work for?" Boyer asked, now becoming very interested. In fact, this was quite possibly the most interesting thing to have happened since he'd been given this ambassadorial job into the cess pit that was magical Britain.

"Harry Potter."

Yes, very interesting indeed. If magical Britain's national hero was asking questions like this, then it meant that he was probably not too fond of his homeland's attitude, in which case it would behoove him to make immigration across the Atlantic sound like a good idea. Nothing would light a fire under the asses of the British like having their famed Boy-Who-Lived abandon them.

Not that Boyer expected it to be easy. He knew how things worked on this side of the sea. If Potter decided to move to North America, then he'd be coming with only the clothes on his back because all his gold belonged to Gringotts. There weren't many people who'd be willing to abandon their wealth and noble status in favor of starting with nothing in a new place.

He said nothing of his thoughts though and simply nodded thoughtfully. "And why does Mr. Potter want to know this?" It was always good to confirm your theories if possible.

"He didn't share his reasons with me." Penny said a tad stiffly.

Boyer nodded again. The girl was clearly new to this kind of thing and nervous, but was doing fairly well despite that. A more cagey diplomat wouldn't have given away information so easily, but she'd clammed up much faster than he'd expected she would.

"To answer your question, yes we are aware of the discrimination against first-generation mages and Britain is indeed an extreme example."

"I'm sorry, but 'first-generation mages'?" Penny asked, curious about the term. She supposed that mages was an alternative term for magicals, probably an American thing, but she didn't understand why the use of 'first-generation' instead of 'muggleborn'.

"That is the commonly accepted term for mages born to mundane parents, though 'newbloods' is also widely used." Boyer explained. "You see, the term 'muggle' as a descriptor for people without magic was coined sometime in the Middle Ages. Wizards and witches were generally much better educated in those days and tended to look down on the mundanes as uneducated cretins, or 'muggles'."

"I see." Penny said, frowning. She thought back to when she'd first learned that she had magic and Professor McGonnagal had explained that she was a muggleborn and her parents muggles. She hadn't thought much of it at the time, it being just another funny word to an eleven-year-old girl, but her parents hadn't liked it. Now that she had heard the origins of the word and thought it over again, she had to admit that it did have an insulting feel to it. "So I'm being insulted even when people are trying to be polite?"

"Technically." Boyer shrugged. The more dirt he could throw at theBrits the better, especially when it was all true. "I doubt that the average person is aware of this, but the social elite almost definitely is."

"How are things for the first-generation in America then?"

"Pretty good actually." Boyer admitted proudly. "They do have a bit of catching up to do in comparison to those children that were born to magical parents, but they don't face any discrimination based on that. Our ancestors founded magical North America on a principal of equality no matter how many generations back your magical heritage goes." It was also founded on the blood and bones of the European magical nobility that had tried to entrench itself there, but that wasn't something that was talked about openly for the most part.

"You'e telling me that there's no discrimination at all?" Penny asked in disbelief, finding that very hard to believe.

Boyer hesitated and then answered with obvious reluctance. "Not against first-generation mages, no."

"Against who then?"

The American ambassador rubbed a hand against his mouth and sighed. He really didn't want to talk about this, but it was too late to back out of the conversation now. He would still try to sugar coat it as much as possible though.

"You know of course that the International Statute of Secrecy has been in place since 1692?"

"Yes." Penny nodded cautiously, wondering what he was getting at.

"What you may not know is that the Statute only made it official and put it into law. Wizards and witches actually started withdrawing from the public eye about a hundred or so years before the division of the Roman Empire. Realistically speaking, it would have been impossible to hide all traces of magic in a mere three centuries."

"That's very interesting," And it was, because Binns had never said anything about this as far as she knew. "but what does it have to do with discrimination?"

"I'm getting to that." Boyer said patiently. He knew full well that he was being long winded. "There were very few trained wizards and even fewer witches in those days, so it wasn't hard for them to vanish. The number of mages actually decreased considerably over the next few centuries due to the collapse of Rome and the subsequent rise of Christianity with their 'suffer not the witch to live' attitude. Then your Four Founders showed up and built Hogwarts."

"I don't get it." Penny admitted.

"You have to understand that something like Hogwarts had never existed before." Boyer explained. "Magic was previously taught within the family, master to apprentice or the occasional exceptional person that learned on their own. A school for magic that would track down and teach every single magic capable child within its range of detection was a massively ambitious project that nobody had even dreamed of before. The number of mages quickly increased, true communities began appearing and eventually a rudimentary government was formed. Seeing this success, Durmstrang was built in northern Scandinavia a couple of centuries later, Beauxbatons in France shortly after that and smaller schools across Europe quickly followed."

"I still don't see what this has to do with my question." Penny pressed, starting to get the feeling that the ambassador was either desperately trying to avoid answering the question or beating around the bush with a trully massive stick.

"Almost there." Boyer promised. "This was where the bias against first-generation mages first appeared. Before Hogwarts, nobody gave much thought to how far back your ancestors were magical because wizards and witches were by and large a people with no roots. Magic was magic and that was all that anyone cared about."

"Is that why the prejudice is so bad in Britain?" Penny asked.

"That and the fact that Britain was largely spared the purges, lynching and incidental deaths during both World Wars that swept the mainland. Grindelwald was especially hard on Europe's magical nobility, he was a Dark Lord that thought mages should rule the world, but cared nothing about blood status. He wiped out a good 70% of the old families simply to cripple their governments and steal whatever knowledge or artefacts they might have been hoarding, but he didn't operate in Britain out of fear of provoking your Albus Dumbledore to action."

Penny could certainly understand why a Dark Lord would want to rob the old families. A lot of the magic that Harry had in his own library was very powerful, as well as quite horrifying and illegal these days. Magic that a newcomer to magic had no hope of seeing anywhere except perhaps in the Hogwarts Restricted Section, but passes for getting in there weren't handed out lightly.

"What I'm getting at here is that aside from non-humans mages have only ever discriminated against those without magic." Boyer sighed.

"So…?" Penny prompted, still having no clue as to what he was getting at.

"So when our ancestors killed off the snobby purebloods two hundred and fifty years ago, our population was made up almost entirely of people who had less than four generations of magical ancestry, and that was considered extreme. We were once again a people with no roots aside from the few non-magical ones that children make before being introduced to magic."

"Oh." Penny breathed in realization. The magical world had lived insulated from the non-magical for centuries, but a new community established entirely by people who had cut themselves off from that would naturally draw from what they had.

"I see you're starting to understand." Boyer nodded somberly. "We don't have the same kind of trouble as you, but we have our own. Discrimination based on skin color was never a problem across magical Europe because they were so busy discriminating against 'blood purity', but magical North America was founded by people who had been taught that non-white people were subhuman and that carried over. Things have improved a lot in since then, especially since only about half of our population is white these days, but there is still some lingering resentment on both sides." The youth of today was especially helpful with doing away the old prejudices, but the old greybeards in power were stubborn and set in their ways.

"It still sounds like you're doing better than we are though." Penny offered. It was terribly disappointing to hear that racism based on skin color had leaked into the magical world too since the apparent lack of it was something that she'd been impressed by, but at least it seemed that the Americans were trying to fix it, which was more than Britain could honestly claim for their blood purity problem.

"We do take pride in doing better than you Brits." Boyer said jokingly, making her laugh. "But I suppose the comparison isn't really fair. The British magical community is the oldest in the world and has been around in one form or another for close to nine hundred years. Anything that old is bound to have a lot of mold growing on it."

"That's one way of looking at it." Penny agreed with a wry smile and stood up. "Thank you for your time, Mr. Boyer, it was enlightening."

"It was my pleasure, Ms. Clearwater. Feel free to come back if you have any more questions." He meant it too. Aside from being a more pleasant conversationalist than many Brits that he had to put up with as part of his job, he was still holding out some hope of getting Harry Potter to move to the US. Listening to British ministry officials cry was one of the few joys of this job.

Mid October.

"So that's the situation in North America." Harry said thoughtfully After Penny relayed what she'd learned. "Interesting, I hadn't considered that mundane prejudices might be a factor."

The end result was the same though. There would still be bitter people that the mundane government could prey on for recruitment, especially if things stayed true to form and the magical side remained behind the times. Troublesome. In particular because Canada was not a separate part of magical North America. Everything north of Mexico was magical North America and everything south of it was magical South America. That was one of the bigger differences between the mundane and magical parts of world, it was much less divided. Magical Canada had been the one region to come closest to splitting off, but it stayed part of North America in the end. Of course, the territory was massive and the magical population just a tiny fraction of its mundane counterpart, so the wizards and witches of the time had perhaps felt no need to squabble amongst themselves, which was more or less the same reason that Ireland and Scotland were under the purview of the British Ministry of Magic rather than being independent.

"What about Mexico?" That particular area was something that had baffled him ever since the first time he'd seen a political map of the magical world in its entirety and saw that it was considered under joint ownership by North and South America.

In the mirror, Penny frowned. "It's strange."

"Strange how?"

"According to my research, there are a lot of first-generation magicals born there, and by 'a lot' I mean a lot, but no magical families seem to actually live there. North and South America just divide the children born there between themselves for training." That bit of information had taken her the better part of a month to piece together and she still had no idea what it meant.

"That is strange." Harry agreed. "And there's no information on why wizards and witches don't want to live there?"

"Not really." Penny shrugged. "The only hint I got was in a curse-breaker's publication of all things, speculating that all of Mexico was somehow cursed, but nobody's ever been able to find any curses except for the fact that the place makes people feel uncomfortable. It's considered one of the great magical mysteries of the world."

Harry's mind flashed to something he'd read years ago, before he'd ever known about Hogwarts, a time when he'd spent his days googling the various old civilizations for references to magic. The Aztec Empire had once sat over large portion of modern day Mexico and they had been very fond of massed human sacrifice, particularly to their sun god but also to others. And the bloody practice had roots going even further back.

If it was merely a case of a mundane priest ritually killing another mundane person it would be a simple garden variety killing to no effect, but Harry had surmised from his own study of magical history(and not the crap that Binns droned on about) that priests had often been untrained wizards, even if they couldn't muster more than the simplest of magic. The tiny displays of power had usually been seen as divine favor in the old religions and those who could perform them often found themselves being turned into religious figures.

If the Aztec priests had in fact been wizards as he suspected was the case, the situation suddenly became quite a bit more complicated.

A wizard or witch sacrificing a mundane person could have some small effect, but nothing really worth bothering with.

A mundane person sacrificing a wizard or witch would be a violent killing that could easily produce a ghost under the right conditions.

A wizard or witch sacrificing another wizard or witch was where things got sticky. Rituals were finicky things that were heavily influenced by the thoughts of the people participating in it and could easily go awry, as Harry could attest from personal experience. The book he'd taken from the Black Library warned about the dangers of using human sacrifice, as the thoughts of the sacrifice itself also influenced the end result.

A fanatical but untrained magical priest sacrificing another untrained magical, especially if it was an unwilling one that was captured in some raid or other, in some half assed and poorly structured ritual while tens of thousands of similarly fanatical people bayed for blood in the immediate area, once again probably counting more untrained magicals among their number? That was just asking for trouble.

Repeat several thousand times or however many random magicals they managed to pick for the sacrifice and voilà, you've managed to cast a lingering miasma of death and pain over a whole geographical region. The non-magical population would be deaf and blind to it, but anyone or anything with magic could feel it.

The Spanish had probably done the world a favor by wiping the Aztecs out. If he was right about this, it could take literally centuries for the magical residue to disperse. That it hadn't already in the past five didn't make it look like it was going to happen anytime soon.

"Harry!" Penny said loudly, snapping him out of his thoughts.

"Huh, what?" Harry asked, blinking.

"You spaced out for a minute there." Penny explained.

"Sorry." Harry apologized. He knew that he sometimes ignored people when he got absorbed in thought.

"What were you thinking about?" She asked curiously.

"I was thinking that I need to see the place for myself. Eventually." He wanted to feel it for himself and check if he was right. He suspected that the Americans knew exactly why nobody wanted to live there, but were simply unwilling to tell people the truth for whatever reason.

"Harry, wouldn't you rather go to a nice beach on vacation?" Penny suggested. "Sirius was bragging about this island in the Caribbean that he owns just the other day."

"We'll go there too." Harry grinned. A private island with a sandy beach and Dora in a bikini(or out of one)? He could put magical research on hold for a while with that kind of incentive. "But we've veered off topic. Let's move on to South America."

"Magical South America is a bit younger than it's northern neighbour and didn't really have a proper community until the early 19th century. Before that it was considered a place for adventurers rather than settlers." Penny began.

"Any particular reason for that?" Harry asked.

"Lack of people mostly." She replied with a shrug. "The Americas are huge and there's only so many wizards and witches in the world. With the attitude of the time being to kill off the locals rather than live together peacefully, it was a while before enough people settled down there permanently. It also helped that the magicals living on the Iberian Peninsula had only relatively recently formed their own government."

"And there's no goblins there either?"

"No, North America was quite determined to keep them from getting a foot in the door anywhere on the continent and kept a close eye on things to make sure they didn't."

"Smart of them." Harry commented wryly. "What about discrimination?"

"Not much of it if you believe the woman I talked to." Penny said with a frown. "I'm not sure I do, she came off a bit smarmy."

"I suppose that's the best we'll get without actually seeing for ourselves." Harry mused. "Alright, that takes care of one continent, let's move on to Europe."

"You already know that Britain is the worst on that score, Italy is number two on the list."

"Italy?" Harry asked with raised eyebrows. Why Italy of all places?

"They were allied with Germany during World War 2, which they claim to this day they were coerced into though not everyone believes it." Penny explained. "Either way, Grindelwald left them alone for the most part, so the majority of Italy's old magical nobility survived and with it the bigotry against first-generation magicals." Penny had adopted the terminology she'd learned from the American ambassador since speaking to him, finding herself reluctant to refer to herself as the offspring of uneducated cretins, even if most people had forgotten the origins of the word.

Harry had to snort to himself in amusement. The Dark Lord Grindelwald, inadvertent champion of equality, who did more to shatter the delusion of blood purity in a few years than Dumbledore had done in his entire life. The irony was incredible.

Penny ignored the snort and continued with her report. "Third on the list is, strangely enough, Scandinavia. I have to admit that surprised me since the non-magical sides of Norway, Sweden and Finland are considered to be among the most tolerant and well ordered countries in the world. The reason for this seems to be the Durmstrang Institute, which actually has in its charter a prohibition from attending to anyone that doesn't have a minimum of three generations of magical ancestry on both sides of the family."

"How is that even possible?" Harry asked in honest confusion. "Hogwarts sits in the most bigoted magical nation of the world but admits everyone, yet Durmstrang discriminates openly?"

"It has to do with the time it was founded." Penny explained. "The Hogwarts charter specifically states that every magical child has a place in its walls and the Founders were too respected for that to be challenged, especially once it became tradition. Durmstrang was founded about two hundred years after Hogwarts and the pureblood mentality was well underway by then. It doesn't help that the current headmaster is a known Death Eater by the name of Igor Karkaroff."

"They put a terrorist in charge of a school? " Harry could not believe what he was hearing. Nobody could possibly be that stupid.

Penny could only shrug in response. "He was apparently pardoned for snitching on his friends, but yeah, I have no idea who thought that was a good idea. There was probably bribery at work or maybe they figured it would be alright since there were only purebloods there anyway. Everyone who isn't 'pure' enough goes to smaller schools that are dotted across the area from which Durmstrang draws its students."

There were so many logic failures in the idea of installing a Death Eater as the headmaster of one of the three largest magical schools in Europe that Harry could do nothing but work his jaw in an attempt to say something. In the end he simply shook his head with a sense of profound disappointment, his respect for whoever was in charge of Durmstrang sinking like a brick. "Please tell me that Beauxbatons doesn't have something similarly stupid going for it?"

"It did for quite a while." Penny admitted. "France was as bad as Britain at one point, but that changed during the French Revolution. Not even the magical side of the country was left unscathed by that mess and more than one of France's old magical families met their end under the blade of a guillotine, though I have no idea how that could've happened."

Harry could think of a few ways. A resentful and angry class of oppressed magicals that was fed up with being treated like dirt by the pureblood social elite would have gleefully taken advantage of the chaos to get some payback. All they would've had to do was undo the aversion wards that kept non-magical eyes from noticing them, they usually weren't hard to dispel after all. After that it would be simplicity itself to direct the wrath of a bloodthirsty mob with a few strategically placed compulsion charms. Hell, it probably wouldn't even have taken a compulsion, just a pointed finger. Mobs were suggestible like that. The purebloods would have probably panicked and lacked the focus to apparate away even if they knew how, and very few of them would have had the power to hold off a mob, magic or no.

"And I assume that Grindelwald mopped up the rest?" He guessed.

"He pretty much flattened the French magical community, they had to rebuild it from the ground up once the war was over. On the plus side, it's now counted as the most tolerant and enlightened magical country in Europe. Beauxbatons even has a half-giant headmistress."

"And they say that violence doesn't solve anything." Harry quipped, still amused by the thought of Grindelwald as the champion of the oppressed despite the man's goals of ruling the world with an iron fist.

"Yes and it only took upwards of sixty million deaths to get things done." Penny replied sarcastically, feeling the need to point out that little detail.

"But it worked." He countered, at this point being deliberately contrary.

Penny rolled her eyes and huffed. "Anyway, the rest of Europe is somewhere between Britain and France. There tends to be some bias, but not nearly as pervasive as what we have and you couldn't get away with open discrimination. As a rule of thumb, western Europe leans towards the more tolerant and eastern towards less. That's probably the respective influences of Beauxbatons and Durmstrang at work."

Harry nodded thoughtfully. That meant that the situation in Europe ranged from potentially catastrophic(Britain), to probably fine(France) and everything in between. How marvelously confusing.

"What about the rest of the world?"

"I couldn't get anything on most of Asia and Africa. The ambassador from India was evasive when I asked and hustled me out of his office when I kept pressing. I did manage to learn that they had an established magical community of their own before British wizards started expanding their influence there, but I couldn't get any details about what happened to it."

"Another place to visit then." Harry mused. "I wanted to buy a flying carpet anyway."

"You do know that possession of one is illegal in most of Europe?" Penny asked pointedly.

"Only because the broom manufacturers are afraid for their profit margins. That just makes me want a flying carpet even more." He had a brief fantasy of flying into the sunset on a Persian rug with Dora in a belly dancer's outfit. Yes, getting a flying carpet was definitely a must.

"Egypt was under British control for a long while too and has become an independent magical nation only in the past century. I'm not sure about any discrimination but there is a heavy goblin presence there due to the treaty that gives them unlimited access to ancient magical burial sites."

"I'd wager that the Egyptian wizards are more than a bit miffed that they have to watch helplessly as their heritage is plundered by the greedy little fuckers." Harry surmised. "Even more so since they employ human curse-breakers." He did recall Ginny mentioning that her oldest brother worked for Gringotts as a curse-breaker in Egypt. Why a human would willingly work for goblins escaped him, but there it was.

"Probably." Penny agreed. "That just leaves us with Australia."

"Yes, what's going on in the down under?"

"Hard to say, they tend to keep to themselves. It was used as a dumping ground for squibs and other undesirables for hundreds of years. It's unique in the fact that their community was actually founded by a group of squibs and their magical offspring. They had a rough time of it too, with no books,no wands and no easy way of getting them."

"In that case, I think we can assume with some measure of certainty that they don't care much about blood purity." Harry concluded. "No telling what other quirks they might have though."

"Well, that's everything I had." Penny declared with a sigh, glad that it was over. Hunting down all that information had been tiring and frequently involved dealing with unpleasant people.

"It was exactly what I needed, thank you." Harry complimented, mentally noting to himself to start giving her a regular salary. She'd done a great job with this and had certainly earned it.

"Are you finally going to tell me why you wanted all this information?" Penny asked.

"Let's just say that I'm a bit nervous about Britain's future and want to have an emergency exit."

The conversation with Penny consumed Harry's thoughts well into the next day and distracted him thoroughly. No matter how he looked at it, there was serious trouble brewing in the future. If he failed to find and destroy all of Voldemort's soul anchors before the defeated Dark Lord managed to claw his way back to life, things were poised to quickly get out of hand. The Dark Lord had had a habit of occasionally attacking non-magical targets during his bid for power and that wasn't likely to change if he came back. Harry doubted that the mundane government would fail to respond if history began repeating itself. That wasn't likely to end well, the two worlds were separated with good reason.

But Harry didn't have the faintest idea of where to begin searching for the other Horcruxes. His idea of using the locket to track the others had amounted to nothing so far. That could mean any number of things, his potential lack of skill to manage it being the least troubling.

It could be the last one, in which case he would be well advised to destroy it while Voldemort was still disembodied. They could be out of range, provided that range was even a factor. They could be protected against scrying. It could be impossible to track them down this way, the book did warn that one's soul was in a constant state of change… perhaps Voldemort's soul shards were too different from each other for one to be used to track another. It could be something he hadn't even thought about.

The other matter on his mind was his continued Hogwarts attendance. He had been thinking of dropping out all summer but had in the end decided to hold off on that. Unfortunately, he had underestimated just how much it would grate on him to be confined to the castle even if he was mostly doing his own thing and slipping out frequently. Still, there were benefits, the Tri-Wizard Tournament being one of them. If he could get past the age restriction, then Harry was fairly sure that he could also win it. There might be some seventh year students that knew more spells than him, but he was sure that he was the most powerful wizard in Hogwarts, barring some of the staff. The competition from Beauxbatons and Durmstrang wasn't likely to be better than him. As the Tri-Wizard champion, he'd be legally be an adult and have all the credibility he'd ever need and could easily wave off the OWL and NEWT exams.

A nudge at his hand brought him out of his thoughts and he reached into the pouch at his side, bringing out a handful of meat chunks and offering them to the thestral.

"You look distracted." Luna commented, smiling as another of the carnivorous flying horses ate the meat from her hand.

Harry wondered about his friend sometimes. Weren't girls supposed to like ponies and unicorns? What did it say about Luna that she liked these cadaverous creatures? Harry knew why he was interested in them; they had a faint sense of Dark about them, so some wizard must have done something to cause this, but how and why were questions that might never be answered. What Luna saw in them was anyone's guess.

To most people, they probably looked like a pair of crazies petting and feeding the air.

"I don't want to come back to Hogwarts after this year." He admitted point blank. Talking to Luna was best done in concise, blunt statements. "There's not much of interest left for me here."

"I'll be sad without you." Luna replied with the same directness, but without censure or accusation.

"I could withdraw you and arrange for you to take your OWLs and NEWTS at the Ministry in a couple of years." Harry offered. "We could travel the world together and I could teach you myself or hire tutors."

The thought of ignoring Voldemort and going gallivanting around the world was discomforting, but he was also loath to put his life on hold because of that lunatic. Besides, if the man was even slightly intelligent(and everyone assured him that he was), he'd hidden at least one or two of his soul containers in some forsaken corner of the world that nobody would even think to look in. Furthermore, if Dumbledore with all the resources available to him couldn't track down the other Horcruxes, then he wasn't likely to succeed outside of his attempts to use the locket either.

"That would be nice."

"You wouldn't miss Hogwarts?"

"I would miss Ginny and the thestrals, but I would miss you more."

"That settles it then, this will be our last year in Hogwarts."

"Will Nymphadora be coming with us?"

"I hope so."

"Will you have lots of sex?"

"Yes."

"Can I watch?"

"No."

"Please?"

"I don't think Dora would be comfortable with that." Neither would he for that matter, but that wasn't important right now.

"Okay." Luna conceded. She would need to find a way to convince Nymphadora to let her watch.

They spent the next few minutes in silence, feeding the last of their meat chunks to the thestrals.

"Will you come to Hogsmeade with me tomorrow?" Luna asked.

"Sure." Harry agreed. He hadn't gone back to the quaint little village since that first time. The place really wasn't that interesting aside from the MILF bartender, but he'd go if Luna wanted to go.

"It's a good thing that Hogsmeade sells proper food for miniature giant space hamsters like Boo." Luna commeted as they exited the shop.

"Yes, lucky that." Harry replied, not even trying to hide his amusement. The store clerk's baffled look had been priceless.

"What should we do next?" Luna asked. They had already visited the bookstore, apothecary and Honeydukes sweet shop.

"We could go…" Harry trailed off in the middle of his suggestion that they get something to eat, having spied a particular pair of redheads coming out of Zonko's joke shop. "Actually, let's go talk to the Weasley twins. There's something I need to ask them."

Luna nodded her assent and they approached the terrible twosome.

"Well if it isn't Harold the Tall…" Began George as soon as they were in range.

"… and his girlfriend, Luna the Lovegood…" Continued Fred.

"Out for a romantic stroll around Hogsmeade." They finished together.

That little performance brought up so many questions that Harry wasn't even sure where to begin, so he decided that he might as well tackle them one at a time.

"Harold the Tall? Where did you get that one?"

"Well, calling you not-so-ickle-Harrykins was a bit of a mouthful…"

"… and 'Harry the Tall' sounded a bit weak…"

"… it's the 'y', names ending with a 'y' always sound weak if you add a title…"

"… so we settled on 'Harold'."

"I see." Harry said ambivalently, but was inwardly a bit pleased by the mention of his magically boosted height. He had no intention of voicing this opinion out loud, but he couldn't help feeling that most wizards and witches didn't really deserve their gifts since they barely bothered to learn anything about them. He enjoyed the fact that he could look down on most of them literally as well as figuratively, petty though he knew it to be. "You could have just ditched the title and used my actual name."

"But where's the fun in that?"

"Right. Moving on, what's this about Luna being my girlfriend?"

Now the twins looked suddenly uncertain.

"Errr… Luna is your girlfriend, isn't she?" George ventured cautiously.

"Where did you get that idea?" Harry asked back, quite bewildered.

"It's all over the school, Harry." Fred answered, dropping all pretense of joking.

"Oh, that would explain the dirty looks some of the older girls were giving me." Luna exclaimed. "I'd been wondering what I did to offend them, thank you for clearing that up."

"And it would also explain the string of propositions I received last month." Harry sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose. There had been a sudden burst of female interest that had dropped off just as suddenly when he refused them all. He'd been baffled by it at the time, but now it made some sort of sense. They'd been fishing to see if he would dump Luna in favor of them.

"So that rumor about you two sleeping together…" George trailed off, not really sure what to say since the Marauder's Map had quite clearly shown that Harry and Luna were definitely spending their nights together.

"Oh no, that's true." Luna replied before Harry could say anything.

"But you aren't dating?" Fred questioned further, obviously having trouble wrapping his mind around the concept.

"Luna means literally sleeping, as in being unconscious." Harry interjected before things could go off course any further.

"Yes, Nymphadora would probably object to that. She doesn't even let me watch them have sex, so I expect that she would approve of me doing it with Harry even less." Luna stated with the impersonal detachment of someone reciting a grocery list. "I could be wrong though. Harry, do you think Nymphadora would object if you put your penis in my vagina?"

"I dare say that she would." Harry said with another sigh. And he'd so been hoping to avoid a 'penis-in-vagina' sentence this time.

"We concur. Women tend to be sensitive about that sort of thing." The twins added, taking their cues from Harry and acting as if nothing strange had just been said.

" Anyway. " Harry said loudly, deciding to change the subject forcibly. "I wanted to know how the Malfoy situation is progressing. I haven't seen him get pranked in a while and was wondering if you'd stopped or if it was just happening out of my sight."

"We stopped." George admitted. "We're starting to feel sorry for the daft bugger."

"We really went too far that time with the explosive diarrhea." Fred added, looking embarrassed.

"That one was my favorite." Harry admitted. Seeing the horror on Malfoy's face as his bowels suddenly failed him had been beautiful.

"You know that he blames you for it, right?" George asked.

"Even better."

"Don't you think he's suffered enough? People probably won't be able to look at him without laughing for the rest of the year at least."

No, Harry actually didn't think it had been enough. But then Harry was like Snape in the ability to hold grudges for a very long time, though not nearly to the same level of intensity.

"I guess I'll have to find other ways of making him miserable if you're not willing to keep at it." He said with a frown. I don't really want to waste time punishing Malfoy for being a turd, but I don't want him getting away with it either.

"We may not be willing to keep tormenting him, but we wouldn't be averse to providing you with the materials to do it yourself." George suggested. After all, it wasn't good business practice to ask what the customer was going to do with the goods he was sold.

"Believe it or not, I'm capable of going to Zonko's myself." Harry said sarcastically.

"Ah, but who said anything about Zonko's?" Fred said mysteriously. "For you see, Mr. Potter, if you accept our offer, you would have the honor of being the very first customer of Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes."

"You two starting up a competing joke business or something?" Harry asked with a raised eyebrow.

"Indeed we are." The twins confirmed. "Zonko's hasn't done anything new in years and we feel it's time for a wheeze of fresh air."

"Nice pun, Sirius would have loved it." Harry deadpanned.

Fread and George gave a theatrical bow of acknowledgement. "So, would you like us to supply you with prank products?"

Harry was smelling an opportunity here. It was no secret that the Weasleys were poor, so there was no way that the twins would have the liquid capital required to get a business started properly. If they hadn't been purebloods, they couldn't have even muscled in on Zonko's monopoly without running into some kind of restrictive legislation.

"I might be interested, but first I'd like to know if you two are in need of some financial aid to get this joke shop of yours started." You could never have too much gold, even if the goblins were essentially holding it hostage. He hadn't quite given up on finding a way to get his money away from the greedy little monsters.

The twins exchanged surprised looks, having not expected this in the least.

"You would just give us the money to start up our shop?" George asked cautiously, distrustful of the sudden turn of good fortune.

"Of course not, what kind of idiot just gives money away for nothing?" Harry scoffed. "No, what I'm proposing is that I provide you with the start up capital and hold majority ownership until you pay back my investment, upon which time I retain a third as a silent partner. You get your joke shop and I get a steady source of profit, everybody wins."

"And what if our idea fails?" The twins were confident in their idea, but they had to be realistic. Failure was a definite possibility.

"Then I lose my investment and know better than to loan money to you in the future." Harry had to be realistic as well. Zonko's was stagnating, Sirius had complained about there being nothing new since his own Hogwarts days. That didn't mean that the twins would succeed though, however clever their pranks were. There was also the fact that the Weasleys had won seven hundred galleons in some kind of Ministry raffle last year and had rather foolishly blown it all at once, demonstrating that their poverty might be the result of fiscal irresponsibility as much as anything else.

Fred and George exchanged looks again, communicating a great deal without needing to say anything. It wasn't an unfair offer, certainly better than most would have given them, but they weren't going to just jump in and agree when it was their dreams on the line.

"We'll need to think about this before we decide on anything."

"Of course, I would have been disappointed if you did agree right away." Harry said with a nod. "Come talk to me if there's anything else you'd like to know."

Fred and George were deep in thought as the two Ravenclaws left, pondering the conversation they had just had.

"Say, Gred?"

"What is it, Forge?"

"Didn't Charlie use to date a girl by the name of Nymphadora in his seventh year?"

"Indeed he did, indeed he did. Warned us to never call her that too if I recall correctly."

"What do you think the chances are that this is a different Nymphadora?"

"I would wager that they are remote at best."

"We are agreed then that Harry Potter is in a relationship with Nymphadora Tonks?"

"Most likely."

"What are we to do with this information?"

"Smile secretively when Harry's personal life is discussed within range of our hearing?"

"That seems reasonable."

Sirius Black was brooding.

That was unnatural. Sirius Black did not brood. At least, he hadn't brooded before his stint in Azkaban. It was hard to avoid the occasional bout of brooding after spending twelve years in there and having your friends killed.

It didn't happen so much when Harry was around, but his precocious godson was currently in Hogwarts, no doubt driving the teachers up the wall with his flippant disregard for the rules. That was something to be proud of even if he wasn't much of a prankster, but it didn't change the fact that Sirius missed him and had descended into brooding for lack of anything better to do.

He didn't even have Remus around anymore to talk to, the werewolf having gone back to the continent. The silly bugger refused to accept any kind of charity and couldn't find any work in Britain, so he really had no choice in the matter. His old friend had become a somber and quietly depressed individual that had gotten old before his time, but trying to get him to lighten up a bit had at least been a distraction.

His brooding was eventually interrupted by Penny, who had essentially gotten fed up with his moping and shooed him out of the manor with instructions to find something to distract himself with. The former Hogwarts Head Girl had settled into her role as Harry's personal assistant and become rather bossy at times.

That was how Sirius found himself wandering Diagon Alley, looking for something or preferably someone to do. Women were always a great distraction and if he found the right sort he could invite her over to the manor and annoy Penny by having loud sex next to her room. That would teach her to shoo him out of the house like a misbehaving dog.

To his disappointment, he spied no likely candidates. The magical population being as small as it was, finding an unattached woman could be difficult at times. Hell, even finding a woman you didn't know already could be difficult at times.

He was just contemplating the idea of going into the mugg- excuse him, non-magical world(Penny had also taken it upon herself lately to get on his case about using insulting terminology) and finding a willing bedpartner when a vision of loveliness passed before his eyes.

She was a tall, dark skinned witch with shoulder length black hair, full breasts and the tightest looking arse that Sirius could ever recall seeing, gloriously displayed in a set of figure hugging blue-black robes that he was quite sure had to be some foreign fashion that he heartily approved off.

He saw her go into Madam Malkin's and wasted no time thinking whether he should go talk to her or not. Sirius Black did not concern himself with what he should or should not do, that was for those burdened with a sense of responsibility and a lack of self-confidence.

The store wasn't really that big and he was able to locate her swiftly. She was looking at the displayed robes contemplatively and Sirius knew he had to put an end to this. Nothing on sale her would look even half as good as what she was wearing at the moment.

"I don't think yellow is your color." He said as he siddled up to her.

The woman turned to face him with one perfect eyebrow raised in silent question and Sirius became even more determined to seduce this beautiful witch. Her face was exquisite, with full lips, an elegant jawline and slightly slanted dark eyes that made her look all the more exotic.

"You know something about fashion then?" She asked with a slight accent that Sirius couldn't place, but he knew that he liked it.

"I know that you are far too beautiful for a robe like that." Sirius replied smoothly.

"I was merely browsing to pass the time." The exotic witch said idly. "If I wanted anything from this quaint little store I would have arranged to be fitted."

"I would be more than happy to help you pass the time." Sirius offered, all but leaping at the opportunity.

"Would you now?" The witch asked with the most alluring smile he had ever seen.

"It would be my greatest pleasure."

"Hmmm, perhaps, but first I would need your name."

"Of course, how rude of me." Sirius said self-deprecatingly. "Sirius Black at your service."

"Adrastia Zabini." She said, offering her hand for him to kiss.

Adrastia smiled again as the man took her hand and placed a kiss on her knuckles, her magic wrapping around him like a cloying scent, gentle caress and erotic promise all in one. The man's body language and smile became more like that of a schoolboy with a crush than a suave grown man looking for a quick fuck.

She had come to Britain to watch the Tri-Wizard Tournament, but this one could serve as a worthwhile distraction in between events. It would certainly be better than spending time with her useless son. Besides, she could always use a little more gold and the Blacks were supposed to have plenty of it. Adding to the tragedy of Sirius Black also appealed to her sense of drama. He who had wrongly suffered in prison for twelve years, then found love only to die in a tragic accident in the end. It would be a perfect climax.

Harry leaned to the side to avoid the stunner that Luna sent at him and sent back a compact bolt of force. He'd been getting so much practice with the basics recently that it was no longer a poorly structured push but a proper spell in its own right. Simple but fast, effective and requiring no wand.

Luna broke off her attack to shield against it, being unable to dodge. That was one of the most critical advantages of wandless casting, it never missed. A wand was like a gun in that it required aim, but wandless magic was driven purely by the caster's will and always went exactly where he or she wanted it to go.

Now that he had her on the defensive, Harry kept up a constant barrage of force bolts, forcing Luna to keep up a shield. She had no trouble blocking his admittedly weak assault, but it kept her from attacking him in turn. He could have overpowered her easily if he used his wand, but they weren't doing this to stroke his ego.

He wasn't the only one who had been improving though and Luna managed to stabilize the shield so that it would persist on its own for a while without needing to be constantly maintained. It was a moderately advanced technique that was pretty much essential in the dueling circuits, otherwise one caster could be kept permanently on the defensive. It wouldn't hold up to more than a single strong spell or several weak ones, but it was enough to allow retaliation and Luna used the opportunity to the fullest.

Harry was once more on the run, needing his full focus to avoid getting hit by the quick stream of spells flying at him. Not the simple to avoid stinging hexes or stunners though, but the wide slashes of cutting spells.

Well, they weren't real cutting spells. That would be stupid and dangerous. It was actually just splashes of color cast in the same arc as a powerful cutting spell, but for the purposes of the training session, Harry had to treat them as legitimate cutting spells.

He couldn't easily dodge them, so he was forced to put up a shield. Not having any real power behind them, that was easy enough, but he was the one stuck on the defensive now.

Deciding on a gamble, Harry jumped over the next low cast one and hurled a strong bolt of force at Luna mid jump.

She was surprised and got sent flying into the magically cushioned wall.

Harry looked down at his legs and grimaced. There was a line of red going across his shins, a few inches above his ankles. He'd misjudged the timing.

"You've lost your legs, Harry." Luna informed him once she'd gotten up.

"It wouldn't have cut my legs off." Harry argued, sounding a bit petulant even to his own ears. No, a real cutting hex cast by Luna probably wouldn't have done more than give him a cut, maybe a small nick to the bone at the worst, painful but not crippling. An above average adult wizard looking to kill him however, would have likely cut deep enough to cripple him at least temporarily. Someone like Voldemort would have taken his legs clean off.

"Are we going to take a bath now? I'm tired." She asked.

Harry looked at her sweaty face and nodded. He'd built up endurance quickly and was now usually outlasting her despite being the one who did most of the moving around.

Several minutes later, he was sitting in the large bath provided by the Room of Requirement, doing his best to ignore his erection as Luna sat behind him and washed his hair, humming all the while. It would be his turn to wash her hair once she was done.

This had become a frequent occurrence and Harry remained conflicted about it. He was pretty sure that there was nothing sexual about it on Luna's part, but it was highly unorthodox. Then again, Luna was a very unorthodox girl.

Dora would almost definitely not approve, but he couldn't bring himself to put an end to it. The sense of contetment and happiness he sensed in Luna during these bathing sessions prevented it. She had few enough reasons to be happy as it was.

She hadn't tried to wash his crotch or ask that he wash hers, so things were at least staying as platonic as possible for two people bathing together.

He decided to stop thinking about it and looked down at his midsection. He was starting to show signs of actual abdominal muscle. His legs and arse were already noticeably more muscular, enough that Dora had commented the last time he'd gone to pay her a visit. No doubt it was a result of all the jumping around he'd been doing since the school year had started, but he was pretty sure that a month and a half was a bit fast for muscle definition to be showing when he wasn't even seriously training.

Had to be the runes speeding things up again, which would make sense once he'd started thinking about it. His first set was meant to speed growth and enhance the general strength and durability of his body, but it could only work with what it had.

Harry decided that he would start doing a few dozen push ups every morning. He didn't have the patience for long workouts, but he could do that much. The runes should make the small effort more effective than it had any right to be and you never knew when a bit of physical strength could come in handy, especially when he was going to be entering himself into the tournament tomorrow. Plus, he didn't want to be fit below the navel and scrawny above it. That would be just weird.

Sitting at the Ravenclaw table, Harry ate and contemplated the new arrivals.

Over at the Slytherin table sat the Durmstrang delegation, a grim looking group of wizards and witches whose physical apperances were frankly more imposing than their magic. Oh, they felt stronger than the average Hogwarts student of equal age to be sure, but nothing that he would say lived up to the reputation of a school that supposedly taught the Dark Arts.

The strongest among them was Viktor Krum, who he fully expected to be their champion in this tournament. Amusingly enough, the sour Bulgarian already had people fangirling over his quidditch prowess, Ron Weasley the most obnoxiously.

The submersible ship they had arrived in was an interesting bit of magic, something that allowed teleportation between large bodies of water no doubt. He would have taken the time to deconstruct it if given a chance, but they would probably object to that.

The Durmstrang headmaster, Karkaroff, had greeted Dumbledore as if they were old friends and indeed it had looked like it, but Harry wasn't fooled. Their magics had been tense and wary.

The half-giant headmistress of Beauxbatons had been far more genuine in her greeting, though her mangled pronunciation of Dumbledore's name was quite amusing.

The giant winged horses that had carried them to Hogwarts was another thing that Harry suspected was the result of some wizard deciding that he absolutely had to have giant flying horses. The fact that he'd overheard Madam Maxime saying that they only drank single malt whiskey was a testament to that. Only a wizard would be stupid enough to breed horses that drank expensive alcohol instead of water.

The actual students of Beauxbatons sat at the Ravenclaw table and were a rather snobby bunch that had been turning their noses up at everything and sniffing disdainfully since they'd arrived, though Harry supposed they had good reason to feel superior if the state of British magical society was known to them. Britain was probably the only country that still thought it was doing well.

Most of the Beauxbatons students weren't anything special, but one stood out like a beacon.

The only veela in the group.

This was the first time that he'd ever been this close to one. The Light of her magic glowed like a miniature sun and he knew instinctively that she would be a woman of great passions and strong emotions. It wasn't the same as when he drew on the Sun, being somehow intrinsic to her nature but also less wild. The contradiction was intriguing and he briefly lamented his relationship status. He would have very much liked to explore her thoroughly. That her Light made his runes prickle constantly also played a factor, but he would just have to deal with it since he had no intention of two-timing his girlfriend. Dora was going to have to get used to even more frequent booty calls though.

He couldn't accurately judge how powerful she was in comparison to the others because her magic was so different from a normal witch, but he found himself hoping that she was chosen as the Beauxbatons champion. It was probably masochistic of him to wish for that, but he couldn't help it. He wasn't sure if it was his hormones or something to do with his magic, but a desire to compete against her was undeniably there.

Of course, he'd have to get himself chosen as a champion first, but he was confident he could do it, especially after hearing Dumbledore explain how he intended to guard against illegal entry. An Age Line? Pfft. Did the old man really think that would stop anyone?

Some time later, Harry was standing before the Goblet of Fire and watching as people entered their names.

The Hufflepuffs seemed to have unanimously decided on Cedric Diggory as their representative and he had to admit that the seventh year wasn't bad. He'd audited a few Transfiguration classes with him in it and knew that the boy was above average.

The Slytherins seemed to have several candidates, the loudest of them being their quidditch captain, Marcus Flint. Harry couldn't resist a snort as he heard the idiot boasting. Flint was repeating seventh year for a reason and it wasn't because he enjoyed his time at Hogwarts so much.

Ravenclaw had only a bare few hopefuls and none of them were anything special, discounting himself.

The Gryffindors had no shortage of applicants, but most of them were just background noise. Sixth Year Angelina Johnson felt like the most promising, but he sensed that she was still weaker than Diggory.

"Would you look at that intense face, Gred!"

"I see it, Forge. It looks like Harry is going to glare the Age Line into submission."

And of course, there were the Weasley twins, who might actually be stronger than Diggory, but were still half a year from being old enough to enter.

"I'm just waiting for the right moment to enter my name." Harry replied complacently.

"Well, while you're doing that, we'll just go ahead and enter if you don't mind."

"You may proceed." He said magnanimously, waving them forward.

"Thank you, Your Grace." The twins chorused and gave a dramatic bow.

"Aging potion?" Harry guessed, seeing them unstopper two vials .

"Indeed, just enough to make us seventeen."

"It won't work." Harry informed them, knowing that an Age Line didn't work based on the physical age of the body.

"We'll see about that, Harrykins."

They did indeed see, as they were thrown away from the Goblet, sporting long white beards and being the targets of much laughter.

"I told you so." Harry said with well earned smugness.

"Very well then, we know when we're beaten."They declared with dignity." Reveal to us the secret of getting past the Age Line, oh great Potter.

"The secret…" Harry paused dramatically, knowing that there were quite a few people listening to his words. "is that you don't need to get past the Age Line."

"Errr, so you're not planning to enter then?" That had come from one of the random Ravenclaws in the crowd. Somehow, despite not announcing it, the entire school had become convinced that he was intending to enter. It was probably one of the few times in history that the Hogwarts rumor mill actually got something 100% correct.

"I am, I'm just not going to bother with the Age line." Harry countered, taking a fist full of parchment scraps with his name on them from his pocket. "Observe."

With that, he threw them all towards the Goblet of Fire. Most of them missed, but several landed inside the ancient artefact and caused it to flare with blue fire as his entry was accepted. He felt a corresponding 'ping' in his own magic from the Goblet as it happened. That was good, because he hadn't actually been 100% sure that throwing parchment into the Goblet from a distance would work. The artefact couldn't read after all, but names were powerful seals. By signing his name on a piece of parchment, he had imbued it with a piece of his identity. The other option had been that the Goblet reacted to the magic of the person submitting the parchment, which would have required him to dismantle the Age Line. Fortunately it had been the former, otherwise he would have looked quite foolish.

"You see, an Age Line is an exclusion style area denial spell that reacts in contact with a witch or wizards' mind. If you know yourself to be older than the specified age, then it will let you pass, otherwise it will expel you. A flying piece of parchment has no mind so the Age line doesn't react." He explained to the stunned looking crowd.

"Such simplicity…" George said.

"Such elegance…" Fred added.

"We are in awe." The twins finished together. "Now if you will excuse us, we're off to do this ourselves before Dumbledore decides to ward against it."

They weren't the only ones that scrambled for the nearest piece of parchment to repeat Harry's method.

Dumbledore had in fact been on his way to check on the Goblet and had seen his security circumvented, but it was too late to do anything about it. He knew that Harry would be chosen as the Hogwarts champion now, he was far too strong for it to be otherwise. There was no more point in preventing entry.

He wasn't sure if this was a good or bad thing. If Harry won the tournament, his reputation would soar even higher. That would be excellent if he followed the proper path, but disastrous if he decided not to. The lad's independent streak was really quite problematic with the way it was making everything murky. Dumbledore knew that he had made some mistakes in regards to Harry in the past, but he didn't understand why the boy was so staunchly refusing his advice when he was just trying to help him fulfill his destiny.

Well, no use crying over spilled milk. He would have to adjust his plans to account for Harry's entry into the tournament.