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Melvin's announcement was short and to the point—no lame jokes, no rambling. He finished reading the notices and sat back down.
For a few seconds the four long House tables sat in stunned silence.
Then the Great Hall exploded.
Hundreds of voices crashed together like a wave, turning into a deafening buzz. Almost every student was leaning toward their friends, talking over one another.
"Triwizard Tournament? Quadwizard Tournament?" Ron looked slightly lost. As a pure-blood, he'd heard the name before, but that was about it.
Seamus and Dean—both half-bloods—were completely lost. Pretty much every young witch and wizard in the Hall turned toward Hermione. "Know-It-All" had stopped being an insult years ago; now it was practically a compliment.
Hermione pressed her lips together, then launched into it.
"The Triwizard Tournament was a magical competition between the three biggest European wizarding schools. It started about seven hundred years ago. Back then it was just a friendly exchange every five years—Hogwarts, Durmstrang, and Beauxbatons. Each school sent one champion, and the headmasters of the other two schools acted as judges."
Students from Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff crowded closer. Even some pure-blood kids who'd caught rumors couldn't explain it properly. Everyone figured Granger would give them the real story.
"Why haven't we ever heard about it?" Ron scratched his head. "If it happened every five years…"
"Because it got way too dangerous," Hermione said. "The tasks kept getting deadlier, more champions kept dying, and eventually the whole thing was shut down because of how infamous it became."
"People… died?" The excited buzz cooled off fast. Seamus and Dean went pale.
Hermione nodded, pulling details from the Prophet archives she'd helped organize.
"It started as a friendly meet in the late 13th century. But the glory and the prize money made everything more intense. The judges made the tasks harder and harder. So many champions died that people kept calling for it to be canceled."
"According to Hogwarts: A History, during the 1792 tournament right here at Hogwarts, the champions had to catch a cockatrice. All three headmasters got mauled. The Durmstrang headmaster lost an eye. After that, the Triwizard Tournament was canceled for good."
A collective hiss went through the students.
What kind of monster bird beats three headmasters?
The rush of excitement cooled another few degrees. Fame sounded great, but dying for it? Not so much.
"So why bring it back this year?" Justin Finch-Fletchley asked from the Hufflepuff table.
"It took a lot of pushing from a lot of people," Hermione said. She'd proofread the special report Mr. Goode had made her rewrite three times, so she knew the politics cold.
"The Triwizard used to be as big as the Quidditch World Cup. When Beauxbatons and Durmstrang were new and struggling for students, competing against Hogwarts gave them huge publicity. A ton of young witches and wizards got famous from it, and a lot of powerful people made money and connections…"
Hermione went into detail—maybe a little too much detail. She started from the very beginning, and the younger students ended up learning way more history than they'd asked for.
The tournament had been held at least 125 times. Hogwarts had won 63, Beauxbatons 62, and Durmstrang… zero. Not once in seven hundred years.
Sure, plenty of students had died in the tasks, but the Triwizard had also produced some of the most famous witches and wizards in history. Their faces were still on Chocolate Frog cards.
Students started whispering again, eyes bright with a mix of nerves and ambition.
Hermione paused, then sighed. "Hogwarts headmasters pushed to end it, but for the last two hundred years plenty of people have tried to bring it back. This year Ilvermorny and the American Magical Congress got involved too. With help from Mr. Crouch and Mr. Bagman at the Ministry, it finally happened."
"Wait—if it's the Triwizard, why is Ilvermorny in it?" Seamus asked.
"It wasn't around when the tournament started. By the time Ilvermorny got famous, the Triwizard had already been canceled. When they heard it was coming back, their headmistress fought hard to get them included."
The students were still buzzing when a deafening crack of thunder rolled across the enchanted ceiling. BANG! The Hall doors flew open so hard that a couple of first-year girls near the entrance screamed and stumbled back.
A wizard in a black traveling cloak stood in the doorway. His hood was down, and his thin, gray-streaked hair hung limp behind him. He limped toward the staff table, leaning heavily on a staff. Every step made a hollow thump on the stone floor.
As he passed the Gryffindor table, the students clustered around Hermione got a good look at his face and shrank back.
It was a round face covered in scars—no inch of skin untouched. His mouth was twisted into a permanent, lopsided gash, as if someone had sliced off a chunk of flesh with a knife. If the blade had gone any deeper or at a slightly different angle, he wouldn't be standing here at all.
The most unsettling thing was his eyes. One was normal—small and dark like a black bead. The other was clearly artificial, a bright, electric-blue orb that spun independently in its socket, like some kind of living insect trapped in his skull.
"Mad-Eye… Moody," Ron muttered under his breath.
Harry had heard the name earlier that day on the train—the Auror who'd attacked his own dustbin. Now he understood why everyone called him Mad-Eye.
The scarred wizard reached the staff table. His blue eye locked straight onto Dumbledore. Professor Levent and Professor McGonagall stood up, spoke quietly to him, and invited him to sit.
"I almost forgot to introduce our new Defense Against the Dark Arts professor," Melvin said, rising again. His magically amplified voice carried easily through the Hall. "Alastor Moody."
---
The feast ended, and Harry, Ron, and Hermione climbed the marble staircase with the rest of the students. Prefects led the way while first-years chattered excitedly, sounding exactly like Harry and his friends had three years earlier.
"I'm entering!" Dean's voice rang out.
"Dream on," Seamus shot back.
"Yeah? Well I'm entering too!"
The two would-be champions started mock-dueling right there on the moving stairs, surrounded by animated portraits, floating ghosts, and Peeves cheering them on from the ceiling.
Pretty much every student in the castle was daydreaming about becoming Hogwarts' champion—picturing the glory and the thousand-Galleon prize.
Listening to the cheerful chaos echoing through the corridors, Harry felt strangely at ease.
"The winner gets a thousand Galleons…" Ron muttered, grinning like an idiot. He slung an arm around Harry's shoulders and shook him. "Mate, if you had a thousand Galleons, what would you buy?"
"You don't have to if," Hermione said dryly. "Harry's vault already has that much."
Ron's face fell. He stared at Harry with a look of pure suffering.
"I just want to talk to Dumbledore about that weird dream," Harry said, shrugging Ron's arm off. "It might be some kind of omen."
He needed to figure out what role Wormtail was really playing in Voldemort's comeback plan. Why did Voldemort specifically want him?
Just for revenge? Couldn't he wait until he was properly resurrected?
Harry slipped through gaps in the crowd like a nimble stag, heading toward the front of the line. He wanted to catch Dumbledore before curfew.
"Excuse me… sorry… coming through…"
As he pushed forward, Harry noticed something strange about the staff.
Professor McGonagall and Professor Levent were leading the procession, chatting occasionally with the new Professor Moody. Meanwhile, Dumbledore trailed at the back, chewing on a tooth-breaking milk biscuit and looking bored out of his mind.
Shouldn't the Headmaster be talking to Mad-Eye while Levent hangs back? Harry thought.
Still, he made his way over and tugged gently on Dumbledore's sleeve.
"Professor Dumbledore? Do you have a minute? There's something really weird I need to tell you."
Without waiting for an answer, Harry launched into the strange dream he'd had before term started. He focused on the snake-faced infant in the crib, the two wizards looking after it, and the python slithering across the wall.
Dumbledore looked genuinely shocked. He stared at Harry, completely speechless.
"Was it a real vision? Or some kind of prophecy? I'm taking Divination again this year—maybe it's what Professor Trelawney calls the Inner Eye."
Harry rattled on, then felt a little embarrassed. Running to the Headmaster over a weird dream seemed kind of childish.
"I know it sounds ridiculous, but Professor… I feel like I have to do something."
"Do something? Do something?!"
Dumbledore's usual kindly tone vanished. He sounded downright grumpy. "You're a fourth-year student—an underage wizard! What exactly do you think you have to do? And why?"
"Because it's about Voldemort!" Harry said, confused.
"Voldemort isn't even back yet! You're still a student. Your job is to stay inside the castle and study. Leave adult business to the adults, understand?"
Harry was stunned. "But sir… you've never said that before."
"I used to be senile!"
Aberforth snapped. "What sane wizard puts the job of defeating the Dark Lord and saving the world on a kid who hasn't even graduated? Are all the grown-ups useless?"
"…"
"Listen, kid. Forget about it. Just study and behave yourself." Aberforth gave Harry's shoulder a rough pat and hurried to catch up with the other professors.
Harry stood frozen in the corridor, thinking about how Levent had given the welcome speech instead of the Headmaster, how McGonagall had handled the new professor… and decided that Dumbledore's brain had probably gone completely off the rails.
"I need to talk to Professor Levent," Harry muttered, expression serious.
---
Later that evening, in the Headmaster's office on the eighth floor, Melvin, Professor McGonagall, Aberforth, and Mad-Eye Moody sat around the desk while the portraits of past headmasters watched.
The Death Eater infiltration plan had gone exactly as expected. Since three key members of Voldemort's inner circle were already working for the other side, the fake attack on Mad-Eye Moody had been easy to stage. Wormtail had passed the word to Melvin, and the Headmaster had warned Moody well in advance.
Voldemort couldn't show up in person, of course, so "Little Barty," Wormtail, and Moody had put on a convincing show of attacking a dustbin.
"Albus convinced Voldemort to let 'Little Barty' stay close and help prepare the resurrection ritual—gathering ingredients and potions," Moody growled in his rough voice. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a mangy, toe-less rat. "This little bastard is supposed to replace me at the school and wait for a chance to grab Harry."
The rat hit the desk with a soft plop and didn't dare make a sound. It curled into a tight ball, clutching its tail and trying to disappear.
Mad-Eye Moody was a scarred old warhorse. Hundreds of dark wizards had ended up in his hands over the decades. He wasn't the gentle type like the Longbottoms. His philosophy had always been: break their limbs first, ask questions later.
Melvin took a sip of hot cocoa and sorted through the new information.
Even though Dumbledore had complained and tried to dodge the undercover job at first, once he was actually inside Voldemort's camp he clearly didn't want to leave. He'd found a way to hand the Hogwarts infiltration off to Wormtail while staying in Little Hangleton himself.
"Smartest play for maximum benefit," Aberforth muttered, lips twitching.
"Albus is right," McGonagall said with a small nod.
"In that case… let Peter stay at Hogwarts as the Defense professor," Melvin decided. "Voldemort can sense the general location of the Dark Mark. If the signal moves too far off, he'll notice something's wrong."
"I agree. Stay alert at all times," Moody said, leaning back and stretching his bad leg. He pulled a curved hip flask from his pocket, took a long pull, and let out a satisfied sigh.
He never drank from anyone else's cup—always carried his own. The flask held both liquor and medicinal potions to ease the pain from old battle wounds.
After screwing the cap back on, Moody asked slowly, "So what do I do?"
Melvin thought for a moment. "You two can trade off teaching. Just make sure the students never see two Mad-Eye Moodys at the same time."
"I'm worried I'll end up strangling this rat," Moody growled, glaring at the silver flask. The flask gave a tiny, terrified tremble.
McGonagall spoke up smoothly. "Remus and Tonks are short-handed right now. Since you can't show your face, Alastor, go help Remus with the werewolf situation. Just remember to send your hair back regularly for Polyjuice Potion so Wormtail doesn't slip up."
Moody's scarred face split into a grin. "Front-line work? That suits me a hell of a lot better!"
---