~ 💎 WEEKLY POWER GOALS 💎🔥 60→1ch | 100→2ch | 200→5ch ⏰ Resets Monday! Thanks!
Hermione ignored the stares and walked straight toward the front of the Great Hall.
The noise died. The entire crowd went quiet at once, leaving only the crackling of the blue-white flames in the Goblet of Fire.
Barty Crouch scrambled to his feet from his seat by the staff table, forcing a smile that came out stiff and unconvincing, his voice carrying the faint edge of someone trying very hard not to show nerves.
"Miss Granger. A pleasure to see you."
This was the girl who had stormed the Ministry of Magic single-handedly and left it in ruins.
A mere Head of the Department of International Magical Cooperation had absolutely no interest in provoking that particular disaster.
Durmstrang's headmaster Igor Karkaroff and Beauxbatons' headmistress Madame Olympe Maxime rose immediately after, nearly in unison.
Karkaroff looked her up and down. "Long have I heard your name — Hogwarts' Miss Witch." A thin smile. "Seeing you in person, I find the reputation has not been exaggerated."
Madame Maxime, towering over nearly everyone in the room, gave a small nod. Her eyes were full of undisguised curiosity.
The students around them, especially those from the other two schools, had never been this close to the legend before. Stories about her had traveled through every corner of the magical world, but seeing her in the flesh was something else entirely.
In the crowd, two gazes burned hotter than the rest.
Viktor Krum of Durmstrang and Fleur Delacour of Beauxbatons stared at Hermione without any attempt to hide it.
"Hermione. You've returned at just the right moment."
Dumbledore's calm voice broke the tension. He gestured toward the wizard standing beside him, face carved with scars, one eye a wildly spinning blue orb, a staff in hand.
"This is Professor Alastor Moody. Our new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher."
Hermione gave a nod.
So Lupin hadn't managed to outlast the curse after all. His identity as a werewolf had been exposed.
"Miss Granger." Moody's voice was rough and low. That magical eye rolled in its socket, locking onto her like it intended to bore straight through to the back of her skull.
Hermione met it without flinching.
Was this the real Mad-Eye Moody? Or Barty Crouch Jr.?
Peter Pettigrew, Voldemort's key piece, the one who would have tracked down his master's wraith and carried word back, had already been sent ahead of schedule to meet Merlin. By all logic, without Pettigrew making contact, Crouch Jr. should still be firmly under his father's thumb.
But this Moody...
She couldn't be certain. Not yet.
That was fine. The answer would come soon enough.
The tension in the Great Hall had shifted. Every student who had dropped a name into the Goblet held their breath, waiting.
The blue flames surged and spat out a charred scrap of parchment.
Dumbledore caught it and read aloud: "The Durmstrang champion — Viktor Krum!"
The Durmstrang contingent exploded. Krum stood, head high, and walked to the front amid the roar of his schoolmates.
The Goblet flared again.
"The Beauxbatons champion — Fleur Delacour!"
Cheers from the Beauxbatons girls. Fleur rose gracefully and moved forward with a smile.
Then it was Hogwarts' turn.
The flames shot up a third time.
"The Hogwarts champion," Dumbledore announced, "Cedric Diggory!"
The Hufflepuff table erupted. Amid a storm of "Go on, then!" and "Don't let us down!" and "That's our boy!", Cedric made his way to the front, grinning.
Three champions. The selection was over.
Hermione watched the Goblet of Fire.
Nothing.
She was just about to step in quietly, ready to cast a Confundus Charm and nudge things along herself, when the blue flames turned red without warning and blasted out a fourth piece of parchment.
The Great Hall went dead silent.
Every eye followed that scrap of parchment as it drifted downward.
Dumbledore reached out and caught it. The smile left his face.
He looked at the name. His brow creased. A long moment passed before he spoke.
"Harry Potter."
Silence.
Absolute silence.
Then it broke all at once, a wave of voices, shock bleeding into outrage.
Every head turned toward the black-haired Gryffindor boy, who looked like he'd just been told the floor had disappeared beneath him.
"What?"
"Harry Potter? He's not even of age!"
"Hogwarts gets two champions? That's not fair!"
"He cheated. Someone cheated!"
In the middle of all of it, Hermione gave a small, quiet nod.
There it was.
Barty Crouch Jr.
Even without Pettigrew, he'd found a way out. He'd slipped into Hogwarts undetected and managed to put Harry's name in the Goblet.
The only question was how he'd gotten free of his father without Pettigrew or the Dark Lord showing up to help.
The professors had already pulled into a tight cluster, voices low and furious. Barty Crouch's face was the color of old ash. Madame Maxime and Karkaroff weren't bothering to lower their voices at all, pressing their protests on Dumbledore at full volume.
Hermione let them argue and turned to Snape, keeping her voice down.
"Professor. While I was away, was there anything significant that happened in the magical world?"
Snape's gaze had been fixed on Harry. It moved to Hermione. He seemed to weigh, briefly, whether she deserved an answer after vanishing for the better part of a semester.
Then he said, clipped and dry: "Bellatrix Lestrange escaped from prison. Does that qualify?"
He paused.
"You can thank yourself for that, Miss Granger. That little 'cleanup' you performed on the Dementors left Azkaban's defenses with a gap that had never existed before. Bellatrix walked right through it. The Ministry buried the story. Two major breakouts in quick succession would have been an embarrassing headline. I only heard of it through Dumbledore."
The corner of Hermione's mouth curved up, very slightly.
The blame was hers. The Ministry just didn't dare say so out loud.
But if Bellatrix was free...
Then Barty Crouch Jr. throwing off his father's control suddenly made a great deal of sense.
She had changed some things. But the shape of it all was holding. The Dark Lord was still working toward his return. The Triwizard Tournament was still his chosen instrument.
She had wondered whether she might need to give things another push, do something to ensure that the prophecy about Voldemort's return actually came to pass.
Apparently not.
Across the hall, Harry was still standing there, pale and lost, absorbing waves of suspicion and resentment from every direction.
His eyes found Hermione.
➤ Next: The Annual Three-Person Meeting
[FULL STORY ACCESS]
📖 Read ahead up to [Chapter 291]
✨ Support the author: https://p a t r e o n（.）com/DarkGolds