The Hogwats Gaijin

The cold stone dug sharp edges into his back. Rough rope bound his chest, pinning his arms to his sides so tightly that his fingers were starting to go numb. But the worst was the throbbing, burning pain in his right forearm, where his robe was torn and the skin slashed by a deep, long cut. Blood flowed down his wrist, hot and sticky, dripping onto the withered grass beneath his feet.

Harry tried to jerk, testing the bonds, but the ropes only cut deeper into his flesh. He was tied to a marble headstone on which, beneath a layer of moss, the name Tom Riddle could be made out.

How? How had he managed to fall into this idiotic, deadly trap?

His head was ringing, his thoughts tangled, clouded by the lingering echo of that blinding pain in his scar that had overwhelmed him a few minutes earlier. But through the fog in his mind, one clear, angry thought broke through: They were herding me.

Harry closed his eyes, and before his inner vision rose again the green walls of the maze.

Back then, an hour ago, running into the dark passage under the roar of the stands, he had felt on top of the world. He was ready. He was part of the “special unit”. Kieran had taught him how to move, Hermione had hammered hundreds of useful spells into his head, Ginny and Ron had sharpened his reactions. Harry had entered the third task with the cold confidence of a predator on the hunt.

And the maze… had yielded.

Now, tied to the grave, Harry understood: it had all been too easy.

He had run through narrow passages, his wand an extension of his arm. He had been prepared to repel attacks from Blast-Ended Skrewts, fight Boggarts, solve Sphinx riddles. But the path ahead had been suspiciously clear.

Somewhere to the left, beyond the wall of hedge, he had heard Fleur’s furious cries, then a red shower of sparks signalling surrender. Somewhere to the right there had been a crashing sound as if Krum was blowing up rocks. Harry had heard the roars of monsters, the crack of breaking branches, but none of it had been aimed at him.

His corridor had been empty. The mist had parted before him as if inviting him in. Roots that should have grabbed at his legs had lazily slithered aside. Even the golden mist that had turned the world upside down had felt like child’s play.

‘I thought it was my training,’ Harry thought bitterly, spitting the taste of blood from his mouth. ‘I thought I was just that good. Special forces, for Merlin’s sake.’

What foolishness. What arrogance.

He hadn’t been tested. He had been herded. Like a sheep driven towards the only open gate — the one leading to the slaughterhouse. Someone had cleared every obstacle from his path with an invisible but powerful hand. Someone had made sure the Boy Who Lived reached the Cup first, fresh and full of strength.

And he had reached it.

The Triwizard Cup had glowed with an eerie blue light in the centre of the maze. Harry remembered that moment of triumph. He had burst onto the clearing, breathing steady, his heart racing with excitement. No rivals nearby. Just him and victory.

He had reached out. His fingers had closed around the cold handle.

Instead of victory came a yank. The familiar, nauseating sensation somewhere behind his navel, as if an invisible hook had pulled him forward, dragging him through space and time.

A Portkey.

‘Tuck and roll, Potter,’ Kieran’s voice had sounded in his head. ‘Don’t land on straight legs.’

Harry had tucked. He had flown out of the vortex, touched the ground and rolled, absorbing the momentum. The movement had been perfect, practised. He had sprung to his feet, wand already pointed forward, ready for battle…

And then his head had exploded.

Pain — as if a red-hot poker had been driven straight into his forehead. His scar had flared with white fire, blinding him, burning away thought, paralysing his will. Harry had collapsed to his knees, unable even to scream.

‘Expelliarmus!’

‘Incarcerous!’

The voice was shrill, trembling. Spells had struck his helpless body one after another. Ropes had bound his arms, a magical yank had thrown him against the headstone, slamming the back of his head against the stone.

And then — the knife. A thin silver blade in the trembling, pathetic hand of Wormtail. Blood for the ritual.

Harry opened his eyes. The pain in his scar had dulled to a background, aching throb.

Peter Pettigrew stood before him. He looked repulsive — grey, sweating, with a mad gaze. In one hand he clucgted Harry’s wand, in the other some bundle that resembled a grotesque infant.

The graveyard was quiet. Too quiet. No judges, no spectators, no friends. Only mist, old graves and a huge, smoking cauldron with a fire burning beneath it.

Harry jerked his arms again, feeling the rope scrape his skin. Useless. No wand. The special unit was back at Hogwarts.

Steam rose thick and oily from the cauldron. It smelled of something sickeningly sweet — rotting flowers and burning flesh.

Harry watched with horror that twisted his stomach into knots as Peter Pettigrew, whimpering and shaking, lowered the bundle with the grotesque creature into the boiling sludge. There was a hiss, as if red-hot metal had been plunged into water. The creature didn’t scream — it simply vanished beneath the surface, colouring the brew the shade of old blood.

‘Flesh… of the servant…’ Wormtail’s voice broke into a squeal. He stretched out his good hand, in which a silver dagger glinted. ‘Willingly given…’

Harry strained against his bonds, scraping the skin on his wrists.

‘No! Don’t do it!’

But Wormtail didn’t hear him. With a whimper full of animal terror, he slashed the blade across his own wrist. Harry squeezed his eyes shut as the wet sound of flesh falling into the cauldron and Wormtail’s wild, inhuman scream rang out.

The magic of the ritual was building. The air grew heavy, electric, pressing on his shoulders, making it hard to breathe. Harry could feel his scar pulsing in time with the cauldron’s bubbling.

He was helpless. A spectator at his own execution.

‘Wand,’ the panicked thought hammered. ‘Where’s my wand?’

Harry opened his eyes. Wormtail, cradling the stump of his hand, lay on the ground whimpering in pain, but still gripping the holly wand with his other hand.

Harry focused. All his will, all his fear and rage concentrated on that piece of wood.

‘Accio!’ he screamed inside his head. ‘Accio wand! Come on!’

The wand in Wormtail’s hand twitched. Barely noticeably, but it twitched. Harry’s heart leapt…

And then the air above the grave cracked.

The sound was like a giant sheet being torn in half. A flash of blue light illuminated the graveyard, momentarily outshining the cauldron’s eerie glow.

From nowhere, straight out of swirling black smoke, a tangle of bodies tumbled.

They crashed onto the damp earth with a heavy, dull thud, rolled, knocking over headstones and raising fountains of dirt.

Harry blinked in shock.

The first person he saw was a man in Moody’s robes. But it wasn’t Moody. His face was distorted, the fake eye had popped out and hung by its strap, revealing an empty socket, and the scars seemed to have smoothed, exposing pale, freckled skin and mad eyes.

‘Barty Crouch?!’ Harry breathed, recognising the boy from the Pensieve memory, only older and hardened.

Crouch was trying to get up, snarling and spitting, but on top of him, clinging with a death grip and clearly trying to strangle him, was Kieran.

Morgan looked terrible. His face was covered in blood — nose broken, lip split — but there was no panic in his movements. Only cold, calculated fury.

They rolled across the ground, crashing into the roots of an old yew tree. Kieran ended up on top. He wasn’t using magic. He was using his fists.

‘Just stay down already!’ Kieran growled, and the sound of his voice mixed with the crunch of his fist against Crouch’s jaw.

The Death Eater howled, trying to throw the boy off, clawing at his face with his nails, but Kieran held his position, methodically hammering his opponent into the ground.

From this melee, like a cork from a bottle, Ron flew out.

He skidded across the grass on his back, hit a headstone, rolled over and scrambled to his feet. His friend’s eyes were wild, his robe torn, and his red hair stood on end.

He looked around, disoriented, spinning his wand in all directions.

‘Harry?!’ His gaze landed on his bound friend.

‘Ron!’ Harry yelled, his voice cracking. ‘Behind you! Wormtail! He’s got my wand!’

Ron spun on the spot. Pettigrew, who had only just begun to rise, still clutching the bleeding stump of his hand to his chest, stared at the suddenly appeared schoolboys with an expression of complete stupefaction.

‘Stupefy!’ Ron roared.

A red jet shot from his wand, but Wormtail, squealing, managed to leap behind the cauldron. The spell struck the bronze side, sending up a shower of sparks.

‘Reducto!’ Ron kept going, showering the space around the cauldron with fire. ‘Take that, you rat!’

Wormtail fought back, but shock and pain in his hand made it poor work. He threw up shield after shield, but Harry’s wand obeyed him badly.

Pettigrew’s attention shifted. The control over the bonds weakened.

Harry felt the ropes that had been cutting into his ribs suddenly go slack, like old rags. The magic had been disrupted.

Harry threw himself forward with all his strength. The rough hemp snapped with a dry crack. He fell to his knees, scraping his skin, but felt no pain — adrenaline drowned everything out.

Two metres away, Ron, pale as a sheet, continued to rain a chaotic hail of spells on the squealing Wormtail, not letting him raise his head. Pettigrew crawled across the withered grass, pressing the bleeding stump to his chest, his face twisted in animal terror. With his good hand he wielded Harry’s wand, throwing up shields.

‘Accio!’ Harry roared, stretching out his empty hand and pouring all his rage into the mental command.

The holly wand slipped from the rat’s sweaty grip. It flew only a metre, but when the warm, familiar wooden grip settled into Harry’s palm, he felt magic surge through his veins like an electric current. He was armed again.

‘Harry!’ Ron, noticing his friend was free, glanced away from Wormtail for a second. His eyes fell on the deep cut on Harry’s forearm, from which dark blood was still seeping. ‘You’re hurt!’

Weasley jumped to him, waving his wand frantically.

‘Episkey!’ he cried, nearly poking Harry in the eye.

The skin on his arm tightened with cold, the bleeding stopped, though the skin remained angry and raw.

‘Thanks,’ Harry gasped, getting to his feet.

He spun sharply. To the left, by the roots of an old yew, Kieran continued methodically hammering Barty Crouch Junior into the ground. Morgan’s face had become a bloody mask, one eye completely swollen shut, but he didn’t stop, growling through clenched teeth. Crouch had long since stopped resisting and only wheezed.

‘Kieran, move aside!’ Harry shouted, seeing Crouch manage to pull a dagger from his boot.

But Morgan had already reacted. He caught the knife hand, twisting it at an unnatural angle, and raised his fist again.

‘Stupefy!’ Harry roared, aiming past his friend.

The red jet struck Crouch squarely in the chest. He went limp at once. Kieran, his fist swinging through empty air on pure momentum, blinked, realized his opponent was unconscious, and rolled heavily to the side, spitting pink saliva into the grass.

Now the three of them stood together — battered, bloody, but alive. Harry turned to the cauldron. The huge bronze vessel continued to bubble, giving off a nauseating, sickly-sweet stench. The liquid inside glowed with a poisonous crimson light.

‘We have to destroy it!’ Harry yelled, feeling his scar begin to throb again in warning. ‘He’s in there! Voldemort’s in there!’

Without thinking, he hurled a Reducto at the cauldron.

The spell slammed into the bronze side, but instead of an explosion there was only a deep, vibrating clang. The magic ricocheted, shearing off the top of a nearby headstone. The cauldron was too heavily enchanted.

‘Together!’ Ron shouted, stepping shoulder to shoulder with Harry.

Kieran staggered to his feet. He wiped the blood from his eyes and, without a word, nodded and pointed his black wand at the cauldron.

‘On three!’ Harry commanded. ‘One… two… THREE!’

‘Bombarda Maxima!’

‘Reducto!’

‘Confringo!’

Three beams — red, blue and blinding white — struck the same spot at once.

The sound was terrible. Not an explosion — the screech of tearing metal mixed with the howl of escaping dark magic. The huge cauldron could not withstand it. It tilted, cracked down the middle and overturned with a crash.

‘No! Master! NO!’ Wormtail howled, trying to crawl towards the spreading puddle of potion.

The crash of the heavy bronze cauldron seemed to drown out every sound of the night. The great vessel toppled over, and its contents — thick, glowing sludge the colour of mother-of-pearl and rot — hissed as it poured onto the frozen earth, eating away at the withered grass.

Silence fell. Absolute, ringing, deathly silence.

‘Did we… did we kill him?’ Ron whispered, his voice trembling and cracking. He kept his wand raised, but his hand shook.

Kieran, wiping blood from his chin, breathed heavily as he stared at the cloud of acrid steam rising from the spilled potion. Thick white mist clung to the ground, hiding whatever had fallen from the cauldron.

Harry said nothing. His scar was no longer merely hurting — it was pulsing like a second heart, hammering waves of icy, sticky fear into his brain. He could feel it: something was there.

First came the sound.

Not a scream or a groan. From the centre of the white cloud came a wet, convulsive gurgling. The sound of a drowning man desperately trying to draw his first breath.

Hrr… sss…

Then — a rustling. As though something heavy and wet was stirring in the mud, trying to find purchase.

The steam began to dissipate, settling on the ground as oily dew. And Harry saw.

First a hand emerged from the mist. An inhuman limb with unnaturally long, thin fingers, pale to the point of blueness, like the leg of a giant spider. It clawed convulsively at the dirt, crumpling grass and scratching the earth with black nails. Muscles tensed — thin, sinewy, covered in semi-transparent skin through which no blood could be seen.

The creature was pulling itself up.

Harry wanted to scream, but his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. He watched as a body rose from the sludge — hairless, slimy, skeletal. It could not stand. The ritual had been interrupted, the magic twisted, and the vessel that should have become one of greatness remained unfinished and weak.

The creature writhed, arching its spine so that every vertebra stood out clearly. It trembled — not from cold, but from the rage of existing.

Slowly, with a revolting crunch, the head turned towards them.

It had no nose — only two narrow, snake-like slits greedily drawing in air. Thin, bloodless lips stretched into a grimace, revealing sharp teeth.

And the eyes.

The creature’s eyelids flew open, and two blood-red, vertical pupils fixed on Harry. There was no human consciousness in them — only an abyss of ancient, concentrated malice.

Harry felt that gaze strike him physically in the chest. It was as though a grenade had exploded inside his head.

‘Kill…’ the creature hissed. Its voice was quiet, high, like wind whistling through a chimney.

Harry, overcoming the paralysis of terror, raised his wand. His hand shook, but he took aim precisely between the red eyes.

‘Redu—’ he began, ready to blast the nightmare to pieces.

CRACK!

The sound tore through the air behind him like the crack of a whip.

CRACK! CRACK-CRACK!

The air around the graveyard trembled. With sounds like gunshots, tall figures in black robes began to materialise from swirling black smoke.

The Death Eaters had arrived.

Harry was distracted for only a fraction of a second, but it was enough. A green jet of curse passed a hair’s breadth from his temple, singeing his hair.

‘Shields!’ Kieran roared, shoving Harry in the shoulder.

The moment was lost. The creature in the grass continued to wheeze, but the ring of enemies had already closed.

They were arriving at a call Harry had not heard but felt on his skin. There were many. Ten. Fifteen. They were tightening the circle.

‘It’s them…’ Ron’s voice cracked into a panicked falsetto. ‘It’s the Death Eaters!’

‘Protego!’ Kieran barked, throwing up a shield as the first green jet sliced through the mist.

‘Attack!’ Harry shouted, realising that pure defence here meant death. ‘Confringo!’

He aimed not at the figures but at the ground in front of them. The explosion threw up a cloud of earth and stone fragments.

‘Depulso!’ Kieran added, sending a chunk of marble slab hurtling towards the nearest black-robed figure.

The Death Eater, not expecting such ferocity from schoolchildren, barely managed to raise a shield. Stone shards rattled against their robes, forcing them to retreat a step.

But there were too many.

‘Seize the boy!’ someone hissed from the circle. ‘Kill the others!’

The air filled with flashes of curses. Harry deflected a violet jet; Ron cried out and ducked behind Riddle’s headstone.

‘We have to run!’ Kieran gasped, looking round with a hunted expression. ‘We can’t take them!’

‘Where to?!’ Harry shouted, sending a Stunning Spell at random.

‘The trunk!’ Ron suddenly bellowed, peering out from behind the stone.

‘What?!’

‘The trunk!’ Ron pointed frantically towards where an old Quidditch trunk lay in the tall grass — the one they had arrived in. ‘It might be a reusable Portkey!’

A green Killing Curse struck the headstone just above Ron’s head, showering him with stone chips.

‘Accio trunk!’ Ron yelled without hesitation, leaning out of cover.

‘Accio!’ Harry joined in, grasping the plan at once.

The heavy wooden trunk, bound with iron, tore free. It flew through the smoke and chaos of battle, spinning in the air like an uncontrolled projectile.

The Death Eaters understood instantly.

‘DON’T LET THEM ESCAPE!’ a high voice shrieked from near the overturned cauldron. ‘KILL THEM!’

The air exploded.

This was no longer a duel. It was an execution. A dozen wands aimed at the three schoolboys huddled by the headstone.

The sky above the graveyard turned a poisonous green. A solid wall of Killing Curses hurtled towards them, scorching the air, blinding like lightning flashes. Harry saw those jets reflected in Ron’s wide, terrified eyes. He knew: a shield would not help. Nothing would help.

The trunk was coming. Too slowly. It seemed like a snail against the onrushing death.

‘DOWN!’ Kieran roared.

He didn’t wait. He simply grabbed Harry and Ron in a bear hug and threw himself towards the flying trunk, knocking them off their feet.

The wooden corner slammed into Harry’s ribs, knocking the breath out of him, but he gripped the rusty handle with a death grip. Ron cried out, clutching the lid. Kieran’s fingers locked around the iron banding.

A yank.

The familiar hook caught somewhere behind his navel and pulled them forward with incredible force into a vortex of space and colour.

And in that same fraction of a second as their feet left the ground, the world around them vanished in a flash of green light.

Harry saw it. He saw three Killing Curses strike the exact spot where their bodies had been a moment earlier. He saw the headstone they had been pressed against explode into dust. He saw the green fire lick the sole of Ron’s boot as he was already being sucked into the Portkey’s vortex.

One more millisecond. Less than a blink. And they would have been dead.

The roar of wind in their ears drowned out the furious howls of the Death Eaters. The graveyard shrank to a point and disappeared, leaving behind only the smell of ozone and the burnt rubber from Ron’s shoe.

They had left on the last train while the platform was already burning.