Barty Crouch staggered half a step backward, his lower back striking the cold railing of the stands, yet he still kept his chin lifted high.
To be honest, he was terrified.
But the honor of the pure-blood families would not allow him to show weakness.
He swept his gaze over the other pure-blood wizards around him. Their eyes met one by one, and they all gave the slightest nod.
Go on.
It's fine.
Harry Potter was not a Dark wizard. He could not possibly be as ruthless as Voldemort. Even if they angered Harry Potter, their lives would not truly be in danger.
So if the cost of testing him was practically nothing, why not try?
Barty Crouch took a deep breath. His hair was plastered to his pale forehead with cold sweat, and beneath his robes, his right hand moved slowly toward his wand with deliberate hesitation.
The gesture was meant to show they still intended to resist, but they did not actually have the courage to fight Harry, let alone Dumbledore.
This was not negotiation. That would be suicide.
His voice shaking, Barty Crouch said, "Potter, do you really think some... some crooked little trick like that can intimidate the Ministry of Magic? Intimidate the great and noble pure-blood families?
"The Wizengamot will always have a seat waiting for you. The charge of murdering Ministry officials would be enough to keep you in Azkaban until the end of time!"
His voice sounded like rusted gears grinding against each other, and the last syllables trembled uncontrollably. For some reason, he felt an enormous pressure building in the air around them, a vast tide of magic so intense it almost seemed visible.
But for the sake of pure-blood interests, he still forced himself onward.
"Don't think you can escape punishment! My son's fate should be your warning. The order of the wizarding world will not tolerate, "
A low hum suddenly spread through the air, a subtle vibration that blanketed the entire Quidditch pitch.
Including the aging Barty Crouch, every weaker wizard present was instantly overwhelmed by a crushing aura. Their eyes went blank, and they collapsed to the ground unconscious.
Professor McGonagall, who had been watching the scene closely in case the conflict spiraled further, changed expression and moved as if to check on them, only to be stopped by Dumbledore.
"Minerva, don't worry. They're fine. They've only passed out."
Once the professors learned the truth, they all let out a collective sigh of relief. If possible, none of them wanted to see bloodshed here tonight.
At the same time, they stared in astonishment at the back of the young wizard whose figure somehow seemed to be growing taller by the second.
When had Harry become this powerful?
He looked even more exceptional than Dumbledore had in his youth.
The Ministry people did not have Dumbledore's sharp eye for detail, but Fudge, as Minister for Magic, had a stronger soul than most, and he had barely managed to withstand that blast of Conqueror's Haki from Harry.
When he saw that almost all of his companions had collapsed, he pointed at Harry with a face full of horror.
"No, you devil, what have you done? You're even more evil than Voldemort! At least he would preserve pure-blood rule instead of completely overturning the order of the wizarding world.
"But you, you've murdered dozens of high-ranking members of the pure-blood families!"
At some point, after the first feather-light snowflake drifted down, countless tiny crystals began pouring from the clouds overhead.
Snow was falling over Hogwarts.
Harry had not cast a Shield Charm, yet the snow seemed to part gently several feet away from him, nudged aside by some invisible force so that not a single flake landed on his body.
Faced with Fudge's accusation, Harry looked almost innocent, and said helplessly, "Minister Fudge, you're really terrible at framing people. They're not dead. If you want to pin this on me, I'd suggest you kill them first with the Killing Curse, forge the evidence, and only then start condemning me."
"You!" Fudge nearly choked with rage. His heart was already weak, and now it clenched so violently that he had to clutch his chest and struggle to calm himself.
Seeing Fudge in that state, Harry stopped needling him and turned serious.
"Minister Fudge, the conflict between us isn't impossible to resolve. In a little while, perhaps we can hold a formal meeting. That would be better than direct confrontation."
Before today, Fudge would never have hesitated to simply have Harry and the others taken into custody. But after seeing Harry's true strength, his thinking changed.
That was right. The situation was not beyond negotiation.
If fighting broke out here, the consequences would surpass even the Death Eater era. Even if one side won, the wizarding world would be terribly damaged, and at least several wizarding families would be ruined beyond recovery.
Fudge tried to steady himself and sound more confident.
A Minister for Magic afraid of an underage wizard would look far too incompetent.
What Fudge did not realize was that no one was paying attention to him anymore.
Everyone's eyes were on Harry.
Harry was simply too dazzling. He was like the sun itself, overwhelming the presence of everyone around him.
Could someone who wielded power like that still be called a young wizard?
Fudge took a deep breath and said in a trembling voice, "Of... of course. Perhaps in two weeks we can formally send notices to magical associations around the world and have them witness the newest reforms in the British wizarding world together."
He emphasized the last few words heavily, and his resentment could not have been clearer. He had no idea why something this enormous had to happen during his term in office.
At the same time, there was an obvious threat hidden in his words. With magical associations from all over the world watching, Harry and Dumbledore's reforms would undoubtedly face even greater resistance.
After all, magical governments across the world had long accepted the rule of wizarding secrecy, and most of them also assumed that pure-blood wizards stood above everyone else.
Maybe some places did not use the exact phrase pure-blood, but whether they called them family enterprises, old houses, dynasties, or something else, the meaning was much the same.
After some brief negotiation, Fudge and the others finally left.
Harry and Dumbledore stood side by side, watching them go. Their eyes were calm and still, but beneath that stillness was an unwavering resolve to move forward.
Death alone would already demand everything they had. In the future, there might be other demon gods as well.
If they wanted to keep the wizarding world from being destroyed by an invasion of demon gods, then they had no choice but to unify all the world's力量, and to do it quickly, even if that meant using methods many would call extreme.
What Dumbledore did not know was that Harry's urgency came from a strange instinctive premonition about the future.
It had no logical basis whatsoever.
But it was absolutely correct.
It was a warning born from the very rank of his chaos-origin power. Within the next twenty years, a terrifyingly powerful member of the Dimensional Demon Gods would set its sights on the wizarding world.
If they did nothing, the wizarding world would be completely conquered by that demon god, a being capable of crossing between worlds with ease.
What made Harry even more tense was the fact that the attribute this demon god wielded was the same as his own.
Chaos.
Perhaps that member of the Dimensional Demon Gods was being drawn here by him.
Night fell over Hogwarts like a heavy sheet of black velvet wrapped tight around the castle.
The moon, half-hidden behind the clouds like a lantern with its light smothered, cast a strained silver glow over the famous Whomping Willow.
Moonlight slipped through gaps in the clouds and threw blue-gray shadows across the grooves of the bark. The twisted branches looked like countless giant serpents baring their fangs, while the sharp spikes along them gleamed a cold, ghastly white.
Perhaps sensing someone's approach, the Whomping Willow began thrashing violently, whipping the ground around it. It possessed no small amount of magical resistance as well. Unless the wizard facing it was on Snape's level, most would have to spend real effort dealing with it.
Harry, however, obviously did not.
His pace never changed. He kept walking toward the tree at the same steady speed.
Once he entered its attack range, he drew his wand and said flatly, "Quiet down."
A flash of light landed on the Whomping Willow. Hit by the Stunning Spell, it immediately sagged into a heavy stupor, even the trunk tilting sideways.
Harry stopped beneath the sleeping tree and looked down at the dark hole below it with a soft sigh before stepping inside.
As he entered, the light at the tip of his wand trembled faintly, illuminating the wet moss and mottled bark around the entrance.
From the traces there, it was easy to tell the passage had been abandoned for a very long time.
But several fresh footprints marked the moss, proof that someone had come here recently and gone into hiding.
And that person was, without a doubt, the very reason Harry had come.
Beyond the hollow tree was a house.
A cabin, more precisely.
There was no question that a permanent Extension Charm had been fixed here, or perhaps a permanent transportation spell of some sort.
Harry was not surprised. Dumbledore had already told him about this place.
When he pushed open the creaking wooden door, the damp smell of mildew hit him head-on.
Harry stepped inside with his wand raised. The swaying beam of light swept over rafters draped in cobwebs before finally falling on a curled figure in the corner.
It was a gaunt wolf, its fur the color of rain-soaked storm clouds, hanging in tangles over a jutting skeleton. Its ribs showed clearly beneath loose skin.
It was probably too exhausted to wake. Even though Harry's entrance had not been especially quiet, the wolf still did not stir.
Harry looked at the man before him, his parents' friend, and what should have been his godfather, with a complicated gaze.
He took out a bottle of life potion from his pocket dimension and guided it into the wolf's mouth, letting it nourish a body already on the brink of collapse.
That movement finally woke the wolf.
It jerked awake, its body changing rapidly until a tall man stood there in its place.
The room was dim, and the man could not make out Harry's face clearly. But he did not attack at once. He only watched Harry warily.
From the warmth spreading through his body, and from the way the scars on his skin were already healing, Sirius Black could tell that this young wizard was not his enemy.
But Sirius was still a hunted man who could not live in the open.
After a moment's hesitation, he lunged for the door.
He would never attack a child, of course, but that did not mean he would willingly give up the fragile refuge he had managed to find and go back to drifting from place to place.
This young wizard might not mean him any harm, but that did not mean he would not accidentally expose Sirius's whereabouts.
Sirius Black never wanted to be dragged back to Azkaban.
Not before he had taken revenge on Peter Pettigrew.
If it came to that, he would rather die.
He was just about to lay a hand on the rotting door and leave the Shrieking Shack when he heard a voice behind him, young, yet strangely mature at the same time.
"My godfather, where exactly do you think you're going?"
There was a trace of teasing in the voice, but even more than that, there was something deeply complicated in it.
The moment he heard those words, Sirius froze.
In the next instant he spun around so sharply that his tattered black robes stirred up a gust of cold air, making the cobwebs on the walls tremble.
This time, he truly looked at the young wizard standing there.
Those familiar bright green eyes.
That faint lightning scar on his forehead.
Harry.
It was Harry.
His godson.
Sirius's throat worked violently, and the silver-gray eyes that usually held nothing but caution and exhaustion suddenly shimmered with tears.
He raised a shaking hand, only to stop it an inch from Harry's cheek, as though he were afraid this was just another fleeting dream that would vanish the moment he touched it.
"Harry..." he said, his voice as rough as sandpaper scraping over a rusted iron door. "It's really you..."
Harry looked up at the man before him, tears in his eyes, and smiled.
"Godfather, I already know the truth about what happened back then. Come on, let's go. I'll take you to Peter Pettigrew so you can have your revenge."
"Revenge?"
The moment Sirius Black heard that word, a bone-deep hatred flashed through his eyes, followed immediately by excitement.
Twelve years.
Did anyone know how he had lived through those twelve years?
Every morning he woke to the Dementors draining away his happiness and hope, leaving him trapped in endless pain and despair.
If he had not known he was innocent, if that conviction had not sustained him, he would have gone mad long ago.
Even in that hellish place, he had never abandoned the hope of proving his innocence.
Then Fudge had arrived in Azkaban with a copy of the Daily Prophet. Sirius saw the photograph of the Weasley family vacationing in Egypt and recognized the rat on Ron's shoulder as Scabbers, Peter Pettigrew in disguise. In that instant, he understood Harry was in danger.
That realization, and his own iron will, drove him to escape Azkaban, both to protect Harry and to take revenge for himself.
And he had succeeded.
He had escaped the prison that terrified the entire wizarding world, and now he had found Harry.
But once he calmed down just a little, Sirius suddenly paused.
Something about Harry was off.
Wait.
Harry was only a thirteen-year-old wizard.
Why was he able to say the word revenge in such a calm, casual tone?
And from Harry's words just now, Sirius had heard pure killing intent. This was not childish playacting. Harry truly wanted to kill Peter Pettigrew.
Even Sirius himself, the victim, had to wrestle with the thought of killing Peter.
So why was Harry able to decide it so easily?
Judging from Harry's calm tone just now, Sirius Black did not doubt for a second that Harry was absolutely determined to kill Peter Pettigrew.
This Harry was not at all the Harry Sirius thought he knew.
If Sirius had not known Harry was still in school and only in his early teens, he would have thought the boy standing in front of him was a seasoned Dark wizard.
Despite the questions boiling in his mind, Sirius said nothing.
He simply followed behind Harry, studying this godson who felt both intimately familiar and strangely unfamiliar at the same time.
Then, as soon as they stepped outside the Whomping Willow, Sirius suddenly realized the surroundings were far too quiet.
That was it.
The Whomping Willow.
Why wasn't the Whomping Willow moving?
Why wasn't it trying to beat them senseless?
And how, exactly, had Harry broken through the Whomping Willow's defenses and entered the Shrieking Shack in the first place?
//Check out my P@tre0n for 30 extra chapters on all my fanfics //[email protected]/Razeil0810