The War Begins
Sirius saw where Harry, Draco, and Luciel had appeared and widened his eyes for a moment with a completely serious and somewhat nervous expression. But he quickly turned toward Edward, who at the same time gave him a look before standing up and hurriedly moving out of the stands. At the same time, Selene and Narcissa also stood up and looked toward Wanda, who gave them a nod.
Moody, who had come out of the labyrinth carrying Victor with Fleur and Red behind him, seemed to sense something and tossed Victor toward one of the nearby workers before looking toward Remus Lupin, who was hidden among the stands, and Tonks. And he gave them a signal, causing them to start moving through the crowd as well.
The three women kept staring fixedly at the screens, thinking maybe it was something prepared by the tournament, though not fully understanding it.
Meanwhile, among the French stands, Juliette Marceau, after seeing the screens, let out a rather malicious smile and quickly turned toward one of the people beside her and whispered something into his ear.
The man nodded before quickly moving through the stands toward several familiar figures; Carrow and his followers, who were staring fixedly at the screen.
The man approached Carrow's assistant and murmured something before the assistant relayed it to Carrow, who also let out a smile before turning and looking toward Sirius.
Sirius returned the look without breaking eye contact for even a second.
Meanwhile several people moved through the stands without anyone noticing, as if a battle was about to begin at any moment.
"The moment he appears, that'll be enough. And once and for all we'll clean up all the problems," Sirius muttered before looking back toward Harry's screen while pulling out his own wand, prepared to make any move. "First he has to come out of his hole," he told himself, knowing he could act at any moment, but doing so would scare the rabbit away.
Wanda, while looking at her son, also had a serious expression with one hand raised as if ready to pull them back at any moment.
But then…
something suddenly changed.
Wanda widened her eyes and turned toward the castle.
Wanda raised both hands toward the castle with a genuinely serious expression.
Then Hogwarts Castle seemed to briefly light up, causing several people to turn around and look in that direction.
And then the enormous castle…
"BOOOOM."
Exploded violently while blue flames that looked like they wanted to incinerate everything in their path burst toward the stands.
Even from that distance it looked as if a damn nuclear bomb had gone off inside the castle's Great Hall.
But luckily Wanda reacted in time and a layer of red magical energy formed, containing the explosion.
But the people, overcome with panic, stood up and started running in every direction, creating complete chaos.
And things only got worse when enormous moles and underground monsters began emerging from the earth and attacking in every direction.
They were moles, worms, beetles, every kind of insect, but enormous, almost giant-sized. And they came out as if they had been there the whole time waiting for the moment to attack everyone present.
At the same time, the screens in the sky shut off because of the chaos.
Wanda saw all of this and made a completely shocked expression because, just like before, she had not been able to sense those monsters until they were already standing right in front of her.
…
Harry, Draco, and Luciel felt their bodies distort.
They felt as if their entire bodies were suddenly being squeezed, exactly like toothpaste being forced out of a tube that was far too small.
The pressure crushed their chests for an instant before the world reappeared in front of them.
Releasing them violently, causing all three to stumble apart completely dizzy, using all their strength and endurance not to collapse to the ground while pressing their hands against their foreheads to contain the sudden dizziness.
And the urge to vomit.
"Ugh… I almost forgot what traveling by Portkey felt like," Harry said while breathing deeply to recover.
It had been a long time since he traveled that way or through Apparition, because he did not really need to, and whenever they went far away, his mother always handled the transportation. And with her, it felt like standing in one place and then suddenly already being somewhere else without even noticing.
Draco also breathed a couple of times and although he was somewhat pale, he raised his gaze toward Luciel, who was handling it the best out of the three thanks to his great physical endurance. Though even he was slightly dizzy, blinking a few times to readjust his vision.
"Tsk." He clicked his tongue, realizing all three of them had ended up touching the cup at the same time.
Before lifting his gaze and frowning.
Harry had a confused expression, while Luciel, who looked the most composed out of the three thanks to his enormous physical resistance, was staring around at the surroundings while his hand moved toward his waist where his sword rested.
Because the three of them, instead of appearing in front of the stands like Bagman had said would happen to whoever touched the cup first, this place did not even remotely seem to be inside Hogwarts grounds.
Dozens of gravestones and ornamental statues decorating tombs were the most visible thing around them.
In the middle of complete darkness, without a single source of light.
While fog covered the surroundings, making everything look even more gloomy.
"Where are we?" Luciel asked with a serious look without releasing his sword while his gaze swept across the area.
Neither Draco nor Harry could answer that, because they themselves did not know.
Meanwhile Harry raised his gaze, trying to see the mountains near the castle, but even those did not seem visible, making it clear they were actually very far from Hogwarts.
The only nearby building was a small church belonging to the cemetery, which looked fairly worn down and somewhat isolated, since there was no village nearby. Though from the condition of the gravestones, it seemed some people still came to visit their loved ones and kept them clean.
"I don't think this is part of the trial, right?" Draco said while slightly frowning at the gravestones around them.
"Could the Portkey have malfunctioned?" Luciel asked while looking toward the cup lying several meters away after being flung aside when they arrived.
"Maybe," Harry said, though he seemed to doubt that himself. "Or maybe it's because of the people spying on us over there," he added before raising one finger toward the church.
Draco and Luciel turned their eyes toward the church.
And as if that had been a signal, two figures emerged from the darkness inside the church and calmly walked through the graves directly toward the group of three.
Their footsteps were far too calm, as if they were simply taking a stroll.
Because of the distance, the darkness, and the fog, none of them could clearly see the faces of the people. At most, it could be noticed they were both men.
And that both of their gazes were completely fixed on them.
Because honestly, going with a friend to an isolated cemetery in the middle of the night was really strange.
Draco pulled out his wand and placed it behind his back while small gold coins began falling around him.
Luciel slightly unsheathed his sword.
While Harry simply crossed his arms calmly. Though his hands were loose enough to react in time against any strange movement.
Draco, standing beside Harry, let out a faint sigh.
"Why do I feel like this has something to do with you?" he could not help but say while glancing toward his best friend.
Harry really wanted to deny it, but at this point even he himself knew that if something bad was happening, it probably had something to do with him already, and he could already feel the headache coming.
"Yeah… I'm cursed," Harry finally admitted after years, wearing a rather annoyed expression, as if he was already prepared to deal with this year's main problem, finish it once and for all, and go back to Hogwarts just to keep hearing his friends mock him because another damn year the Harry Potter curse had struck again.
The two men stopped around three meters away, though their faces still could not be seen because of the darkness and fog.
But one of them, the one who looked as if something were dripping from his hands, finally spoke.
His voice sounded as if his throat had been scraped with sandpaper, causing discomfort to anyone hearing it and chills at the same time.
"Kill them. They're useless alive. Leave only him," he said with a dry tone full of complete disdain.
The other man answered with the same simplicity.
"Sure."
Though upon hearing it, his voice sounded genuinely familiar, especially to Luciel, who immediately raised his gaze toward him and stared fixedly.
But without wasting time, the second man simply said:
"Avada Kedavra. Avada Kedavra."
Twice.
And at surprising speed, two green flashes shot out almost at the same time from his wand; one flying toward Luciel and the other toward Draco or Harry, who were standing close enough together that it was hard to tell which one it was aimed at.
Luciel slightly lowered his center of gravity while gripping his prepared sword tighter, but he did not even need to move.
Harry, still with his arms crossed, simply moved his fingers slightly and two walls of earth rose at the same time, rising up as barriers against the instant death curses.
"Sorry, but I can't let you kill my friends. We should finish this quickly; we're still in the middle of a competition," Harry said in a genuinely annoyed tone.
At the same time he uncrossed his arms, he finally pushed the fog aside, revealing the faces of the men standing there.
Harry froze after seeing the red eyes of one of them. Even his fingers stopped moving for an instant.
Not only because he was covered in blood and half his face was disfigured with what looked like pulsing reddish flesh, almost disgusting.
And those red eyes very similar to someone using chaos magic were there.
Those eyes that had been following him for so long without him knowing whose they were.
And now he had them right in front of him.
But his shock was not only because of the man's eyes or his disfigurement.
But because of how familiar he was.
Harry could not help slightly turning and looking at the other man's face.
And his expression remained just as shocked, even slightly narrowing his eyes.
But the ones most surprised were not Harry, but Luciel and Draco, whose expressions had completely darkened and whose faces were filled with obvious hostility, even tightening their grips on their wands and sword.
Harry turned around, looking at Draco's face, then Luciel's, and then back at the two men standing in front of them.
And the reason both of them looked so familiar was because one of them was the perfect older copy of Luciel. With a style extremely similar to Professor Dominic.
And the other…
"Who said we wanted you alive? The only one I want alive is my son… Draco," Lucius Malfoy said in the most horrifying version possible, looking toward his own son Draco with a macabre smile.
While Armand Duvalier, formerly Professor Dominic Grey, looked at Luciel with a faint mocking smile.
"We meet again… my son," he told him with disdain.
After all, Luciel was the one who had killed him last year.
And now he was back here.
And with his true face, the one he had in the past when he murdered his own wife in front of his son.
Luciel's hand tightened around his sword hard enough to make the handle slightly crack.