*Caw!*
A real crow next to me was loudly cawing right at me as I stared at a manor in the far distance. Thunder rumbled above the two of us as the black bird was looking for shelter beneath the leaves just like me.
But I didn't sit in the tree to shield myself from rain.
*Caw-caw!*
The bird hopped even closer to me when I ignored it, a certain playful glint in its eyes.
I continued to pay it no mind, mentally mapping my real target for this extracurricular activity.
*Ca-caw!*
I wasn't in the faraway Scottish Highlands, the tree I was sitting in was in Wiltshire. An area west of London, somewhere between the English capital and Bristol, in the south of the island. Specifically, I found myself in the middle of a national park that muggles didn't know they kept closed off not entirely for nature preservation but for the protection of magical homes and magizoological habitats instead.
I had my Eagle Vision active, ironic since I was in the form of a hooded raven, and studied the wards of the outer perimeter of one home in particular.
*Caw, caw!*
*CAW!* I answered and spread my wings menacingly in the direction of the loud nuisance, finally making the crow next to me crash down a few branches in fright.
Some peace and quiet at last. The bird didn't come back.
Except for the incessant loud platter of rain and the rumbling of the thunderclouds above me, I was finally able to fully concentrate.
But I didn't mind the weather, it was what allowed me to leave Hogwarts on a weekday night and arrive here almost a thousand kilometers away from the magical school without alerting the wards of either place.
Lightning travel might be flashy and loud, but unless I would land next to someone, like I did with Hagrid, again nobody would pay attention to a thunderbolt hitting a distant tree.
'As expected of someone of his stature,' I thought absentmindedly as my raven eyes narrowed.
Malfoy Manor was almost as heavily warded as Hogwarts itself. The only differences were the sheer size of the warded space in Hogwarts favor and the viciousness of the wards placed on the family home in front of me now.
'Outer perimeter has mindlessness charms and muggle repellents,' I categorized as I tried to take the interwoven charms apart piece by piece. 'A layer deeper starts the evaluation of the visitor's intent with the help of Victorius Gaunt's Foe's Foe ward, followed by violent repulsion of those it deems a threat. That twist on the Gaunt spell I found in the Black library has to be bloodwards fed with innocent blood unless the Malfoys figured out a different method that Victorius Gaunt hadn't theorized.'
The layered wards of Malfoy Manor, as opposed to what I did with Umbridge where I simply brute-forced my way into the magical home for a quick assassination, proved to be insurmountable without prior planning. The wards had backups, contingencies – even magical feedback loops that would alert somebody inside the home of any changes.
… maybe poisoning Lucius during the second year hadn't been entirely smart.
In my defense, I hadn't really thought about whether or not any common magical remedy could solve nerve agents used by the Brotherhood. It seemed Lucius was still paranoid enough to change up the wards of his ancestral mansion. But maybe he didn't do it just because of me either. The political climate in recent months has changed considerably.
The upkeep on wards like these, though, must cost a fortune unless the wardstone sat on a leyline like the major one running below Hogwarts where the Founders installed the Forge.
My occlumency was running overtime as I imprinted everything into my mind to work out how to best approach breaking into the Malfoy home at a later time. With Harry being made the fourth champion two days ago and with Karkaroff clearly already being antagonistic to me, I doubted it would take long until the rest of Death Eaters would be broken out of Azkaban by Voldemort. The plot wouldn't stop for me and I was still deciding whether or not I wanted to stop Voldemort from gaining any of his mad followers.
The dark lord might be lacking his consorts Peter Pettigrew and Barty Crouch Junior because of my actions. With Peter killed off after I exposed his rat animagus form and Barty getting thrown into the deepest cell the ministry could offer after I outed him during the Welcome Feast. But if Voldemort still got to Harry to make him the fourth champion, the broken specter clearly already managed to influence some of his previous followers. I highly suspected Karkaroff, but killing a headmaster-level figure constantly surrounded by his students on a magical ship was not going to go my way unless I spent a few months plotting.
And whoever else Voldemort has on his side in addition to Karkaroff might not be enough for what was going to happen. Hence, they might try to spring Voldemort's followers early.
I was certain that a rich weasel like Malfoy was still going to have to offer his own assets to his lord. And I wanted to be prepared, which is why I used the lightning cover to make the trip.
Circling the large warded estate a few times around midnight, I flew east, caught a thunderbolt for my spell and travelled back to the Forbidden Forest via lightning travel through the clouded skies.
As a raven on the Hogwarts grounds once more, I entered my own open dorm room window and went to bed.
This plan would take a while. Hopefully I'd get it done before the Azkaban breakout to hit them before they could all recover and before Voldemort could get his body back with the blood of either Harry or me.
Not that I didn't already have a plan in mind should he take my blood.
— — —
"You didn't attend potion lessons," Hermione said, sounding almost offended.
"I'm the only one without a partner and I only lingered between either you and Mandy or Isobel and Sue as a third wheel," I countered with a helpless shrug. "Or, heavens forbid, I'd be made to make the potion on my own with Professor Slughorn breathing down my neck."
"But you can't just skip a lesson. You already barely attend any of them in the first place," she pointed out with a small frown and a quiet voice.
We were in her sanctuary, the library, after all.
"I can, actually. As champion in the Triwizard Tournament, I don't have to attend any classes and I'm free to skip any homework that I deem too much work if it cuts into my time preparing for the tasks."
My confident grin told her my happy truth: I became a champion just to be able to skip classes even more than I already did. Self-study for those few classes I still had to do to earn my O.W.L.s was time well spent in many cases anyway, history especially.
Potions was just one of those subjects I was sure I simply didn't have any talent for anyway. Sure, following the recipe was super easy if it was just magical cooking instructions. But any intricate potion creation process where feeling or magic was involved, I simply never got exactly right. Like I wasn't wired to be good at this stuff.
With teachers like Snape, I simply didn't find any reason to excel in this subject also. I didn't want to waste my efforts becoming outstanding in absolutely all magical aspects. I'd rather become supremely powerful in a few I knew I was talented in.
"So you're fine getting just an acceptable or even failing your potion O.W.L.s? I thought you wanted to get into alchemy!" Hermione asked, scandalized by my nonchalance.
"I already got into alchemy," I said with a raised brow. "Alchemy does more than just advanced potioneering. Sure there are blind spots in my foundation, but I'll just fill them as needed. It's not like I'm completely helpless in front of a cauldron either."
"Think of your final grades," she protested in a helpless whisper. Her concern for me was very endearing and very in character for her.
"Hermione, I got a master accreditation in Ancient Runes and finished my N.E.W.T.s in several subjects as a third year student. Nobody will care that I 'barely' passed potions," I said with a wry smile. "It's not like I can't ace the theoretical exam with a little cramming next year either. An acceptable is all but guaranteed unless Snape becomes my sole examiner."
"Will you at least attend Astronomy later?" She inquired quietly, reluctantly accepting my reasoning.
"Yeah, sure," I answered with a shrug.
We sat there in silence for a while – each with a heavy tome in front of us – until Luna came up behind me. She was golden in my vision, so it wasn't Lara with the polyjuice potion.
"Hagrid and I found dragon dung in the forest today," the blonde klutz said almost offhandedly as she sat down on the chair next to mine and opened her diary.
"You don't need to tell me, I already know the four dragons we'll have to fight for the first task," I said with a reassuring smile. I found them wrangled by Charlie Weasley and company in the forest last night. "My strategies are already locked in for each possible task. You should rather remind Harry so that he doesn't die."
"How'd you know?" Luna asked with wide eyes.
"Come on, it's dragons. They can't possibly hide four fire-spewing lizards as big as a house in the forest with just a few dragon wranglers from Romania," I waved off with a small scoff.
"You even know they are from Romania?" Hermione asked wide-eyed.
"Sure, Charlie Weasley is among them. You know I'm friends with the twins, so I know he works at a dragon habitat in Romania."
Luna gave me a happy grin, nodded, and left with a happy skip in her steps. It seemed her mission was executed flawlessly.
"You think she'll tell Harry?" Hermione asked as she bit her lip in worry.
"I think if you're his friend you should tell him yourself just in case she doesn't," I proposed and with a conflicted expression, she gathered her things and went away in search of the reluctant fourth champion.
"What's your plan?" Mandy asked as she sat down next to me after Hermione left. It seemed she was lurking close-by and had overheard us. I had noticed her presence when I checked if Luna was actually Luna.
"To find a quieter spot for my casual reading next time?" I asked without looking up.
"You know that's not what I mean," the freckled girl complained with a pout.
"And yet it remains my biggest issue today – why were you listening in on Luna, Hermione and I anyway?"
"You said you'll have to fight a dragon," she whispered in exasperation as she ignored my counter-question. "I know you're good at dueling and all, but you're not fighting-a-dragon-like-it's-nothing-powerful."
"Well, first off I don't need to fight a dragon per se," I said finally looking up with a small sigh. She was concerned for my well-being, I couldn't just remain unaffected by the care she showed. "I'll likely just have to bypass it to achieve some objective and that's easy."
Mandy narrowed her eyes and just studied my expression.
"You're way too calm to be talking about sneaking past dragons! That's dragons, not kittens, you know," she accused with a playful eyeroll when she didn't find what she was looking for on my face.
"Dragons are predictable," I deflected with a shrug. "They know only four modes of attack, depending on the specific race of course. Claws and tail are two forms of attack, those are easy to dodge if you're prepared. Third is fire breath, obviously. There's a bunch of spells to deal with that."
"And the fourth?" Mandy asked when I didn't continue.
"Overwhelming physical might," I answered with an indifferent shrug.
Her eyes widened but she didn't say anything. Only a minute later, she inquiringly whispered, "And how do you beat that?"
"Same with the tails and claws. Just don't fight them on their terms."
"That's not a plan," the freckled girl whispered indignantly.
"It's the foundation of a plan."
She shook her head and we just continued to study in silence.
— — —
[POV 3rd person, Nurmengard Castle, Prison Cell]
"No need to cry, girl. Wizards are fickle. He could still change his mind," the imprisoned dark lord waved away lazily. But he was actually paying attention to the girl crying inside the enchanted mirror instead of reading a book.
Grindelwald could count the number of times he had been wrong and knew he was in the wrong on a single hand. He could also admit to himself that he needed to add one count now.
"Natalie, you're young. The blessings of the young are that rarely any of your mistakes are permanent. If you truly wish to be with him, show him your sincerity. The boy was clearly fond of you," Grindelwald coaxed with a gentle smile, inwardly adding, 'At the very start, at least.'
"*It won't work. There's half a dozen witches just as smart and pretty as me after him now,*" the girl denied between sniffles.
Grindelwald was half a mind to offer himself up, drawing the ire of the boy onto him so that he would let Natalie off the hook. But then he just shook his head, deciding it was old age talking instead of his hard-won prestige and respect that he still commanded.
He couldn't stoop this low.
"You're in the house of snakes, no? Why not just take out the competition? Or sabotage his dates subtly," Grindelwald offered with furrowed brows.
He recognized that while he was a master in manipulating people, he was a good seventy to eighty years too late to meddle in the romantic dalliances of teenagers.
With a wave of his finger, Grindelwald muted the girl and himself without her even noticing. "Why am I even entertaining this conversation," the dark lord whispered to himself with furrowed brows as he watched the red-headed girl clad in pyjamas blow out her nose into a silk kerchief again.
She looked so much like her aunt in her younger years. One of his first and definitely most loyal followers.
Natalie's hair was a more vibrant red, though. And Gellert Grindelwald had not once seen Vinda Rosier cry even when she sustained a gruesome wound during the early battles in France. So this was a new visual for him that he found hard to connect to the face he saw in the enchanted mirror's image compared to what he knew in his memories.
"I'm two moves away from finally putting Albus into checkmate and finishing our century old game, this shouldn't bother me," Grindelwald lamented as he ran his bony fingers through his long hair. A glint suddenly reflected in his eyes, as he finally ignored the mirror and looked outside to look at a bright star outside. Well, his trained eye obviously told him he was looking at another planet in the solar system, not a star. "Were your calculations wrong? Why was I born with these distant memories when my destiny had always been to simply pave the way? Why, Jupiter?"
Nobody heard him, of course, and with a sigh that bemoaned his own fate, he once more paid attention to the girl he had harmed and tried to mend her heart.
For an old friend's sake.
— — —
[POV 3rd person, Hogwarts grounds, several days later]
From one of the courtyards just outside the castle, a long and winding bridge with a roof led over a deep ravine toward the Quidditch pitch. It was one of three paths one could take toward the grand stadium and most students took this path when it rained.
Which was quite often.
But since the Quidditch tournament was cancelled this year, the bridge saw quite a few less students compared to prior years. That served Talion Macnair perfectly well for his training.
Instead of running over the bridge on the pathway, Talion was just below it, daringly climbing along the wooden beams that magically kept the centuries-old construction from collapsing.
Barely breaking a sweat, Talion challenged himself using only his hands and arms to cross the distance while hanging and swinging forwards. On the way back again, he used clever jumps and incorporated magical footholds with the help of silent-cast Arresto Momentum charms.
After he was finally panting from exertion, he purposefully dropped a level downward. The arches and beams here were different. A new challenge to make sure he was doing the most he could.
Two hours later, Talion was still alone outside. The weather was terrible and most students still had classes. Only the Hogwarts champion could be so carefree in the middle of the day.
"Haaa, haaa, haaa," Talion exhaled loudly and continuously after finally climbing back up, fully out of breath now. He was still hanging outside of the bridge, one arm on the guard rail of the wide path.
"Near death encounter?" A bemused voice clearly belonging to a woman rang out near him.
Before he could answer, it added, "No. You did this on purpose. You're all sweaty, meaning this was training and not an unplanned accident."
Talion looked up, finding Carina Black staring at him in her blue Beauxbaton uniform that she had added a large fur scarf to, to shield her from the Scottish cold.
"Training," Talion answered between pants, his breath still labored. It took a while for him to get this exhausted. Over two hours of extreme climbing exercises did the trick.
"Training to dull your sense of self-preservation and increase your stupidity?"
"I'm perfectly safe," the young wizard answered with a tired shake of his head.
Carina walked closer, brushing a strand of perfectly straight raven hair behind her ear and leaned over the railing close to where Talion still clung to it.
"This fall would kill you ten out of ten times," she pointed out dryly. "If you're lucky and the wind picks you up midfall, you might land in the lake for a water burial."
"Professor Trelawney did predict that I would die drowning," Talion accepted with a dry chuckle. "I had always hoped I would die drowning in the bosom of a beautiful lady. But then again, a few weeks later the divination professor also told me I would die torn apart by 'a thousand fanged mouths'. If both are true, I'd drown in my own blood before the mutilation. What a way to go."
Carina looked back at the boy with a raised brow. The topic was macabre, sure, but she didn't mind at all.
"I had high hopes for Professor Trelawney. I envy true seers and their gifts. My father greatly disliked Dumbledore, but he once told me that the man would never invite a divination professor without the gift to teach at the school," the graceful witch said as she sighed. Her gaze was searching his face for the true opinion Talion had on the resident 'seer', to make sure her own findings were founded in truth.
One could never really tell with seers, after all. Most of them were eccentric.
"Beauxbaton's divination professor not good?"
"Madam Aymard is only gifted in a single form of divination, tarot. I wanted to learn from someone gifted in the other forms," Carina explained with a helpless shrug.
"Well, Trelawney is not a hack, but she is definitely irrational and not very good at her job. She did speak at least one true prophecy," Talion countered, close to catching his breath. He finally straightened his back as he brought both hands to the railing but made no move to jump over to the safety of the walkway.
"How do you know?"
Talion shrugged and answered, "It is regarding me. Possibly. One of three. If you're a fan, you know they are vague."
"'Fan,'" she scoffed.
"Tell you what," Talion proposed, his eyes narrowed deep in thought. "On our date tomorrow, I could tell you about a possible chance of gaining a seer's bloodline."
"Date? Our lunch tomorrow was a date?" Carina asked, ignoring the chance of Talion actually knowing a way. She knew he was well read, all Ravenclaws were. But among all the footnotes in all the dusted arcane tomes, nobody had written a clear answer to the question of what seer's blood was and how you could gain it.
"Of course it was. I'm moderately handsome and you're positively gorgeous. As far as I'm aware, we're both single and possibly dead in less than a year. It would be a waste to not call it a date," Talion answered with a good-natured chuckle. "Unless, has Madam Aymard already read you your fate with the tarot deck to tell you you'll live long and happy?"
Carina gained a pleased smirk, the cold wind blowing her silky hair all around her fair face. It was either the weather or his flirting that gave her cheeks a rosy tint. Talion told himself it was his own effort.
"I will not die in the tournament," she declared as she regarded the young wizard her father had urged her to pursue. "And you may think of our date as a date. Your chances, however, are rapidly sinking if you're a reckless daredevil with no regard for his life. I need a dependable man at my side for what is to come."
Talion looked down at his scratched, sweat-glistening arms from when he just swung around the beams holding up the bridge.
With a wry smile, he looked up and said, "I hope that is negotiable."
Without waiting for a reply, he let go of the railing, spread his arms wide and allowed himself to fall backward.
"Talion!" Carina screamed with wide eyes as she tried to grab his shirt but came up empty. She hurriedly leaned over the railing, her wand flying to her hands but when she looked down she didn't find him anywhere. "Talion!!"
"No need to be so loud, I'm here," Talion shouted with a laugh and Carina turned around so fast her head was spinning.
There he was, that insufferable bastard who almost gave her a heart attack, happy as a clam while standing on his broom midair on the other side of the bridge.
With a wave and a wink, he flew off.
"What a bloody idiot," Carina cursed as she tucked her bangs back behind her ears. The wind was picking up.
A storm was coming.
"Let's hope he has a way to make a picnic in the skies enjoyable during a storm," she whispered as her eyes followed Talion as he surfed his broom up toward the Ravenclaw tower.