There's been a slight change of order for the Third Task as I realised that the way I wrote the first task would have weighted the scores more heavily in Krum and co's favour, it's now Susan, then Krum, Luna, Neville, Rolf, Fleur, Harry and Davies.

Due to a concept I'm currently trying to worry out, Hermione is now Lady Hufflepuff and Luna is Lady Ravenclaw, and Goblin Silver is now referred to as Myddril (the Druids' name for goblin silver, which was corrupted to Mithril in the version Tolkien was told). Neither of these changes have much effect on the story going back, but Hermione becoming Lady Hufflepuff lets me add something here, and using 'goblin silver' all the time has been irritating me for a while now…. All houses that originated as Druid Families, Noble or other, are now identified as Druid Houses too.

Usual disclaimer, no rights to anything from JKR's stories.

They didn't bother prosecuting Dumbledore or the others trying to get them killed after the Second Task, the evidence was just filed for the case to be presented after the Third Task.

Things were quiet for nearly two months after the Second Task while the giant hedges that would make up the maze were being grown, but the obstacles were being organised as well. One advantage they had was that the Unspeakable who ripped the plans for the Triwizard Tournament out of Dumbledore's head had only announced a fraction of what he extracted from the manipulative old bastard, and he'd left holes all through the fabric of his memory, so Dumbledore didn't really know what he'd lost.

The biggest secret that the Unspeakable had taken was how Dumbledore had gotten control of so many people over the past ninety odd years. They'd all presumed that it was the Dumbledore mind magics that let him steal so much over the years, but while that was definitely part of it, it wasn't the biggest weapon in his arsenal, no, his lover had brought that with him when he was sent to Britain after he being thrown out of Durmstrang in disgrace.

What the Unspeakable discovered was that Gellert Grindelwald had actually been expelled from Durmstrang and almost imprisoned for a dark ritual that killed his lover by stealing his, well for want of a better term, stealing his magic and soul. Durmstrang and the Nordic Confederation officials couldn't determine exactly what he had done and the laws had been looser at the end of the Nineteenth Century, so all they could do to him was throw him out of Durmstrang and the Nordic Magical Confederation and ban him from ever returning.

What they hadn't realised was that the incident Gellert was expelled for hadn't been the first time he'd used that ritual, he'd previously experimented on a few young witches and wizards who were of so little account that no-one bothered making any real effort to find out why they disappeared from their villages. With each ritual, Gellert had taken what magical power his victims had, and he took more and more from them before they died as his power and understanding of the ritual grew. By the time he performed the ritual on his lover at Durmstrang he was managing to steal the victim's magical signature along with his or her magic, and that was what he was really after from his lover, because his lover had been the last living member of a family that had been the custodians of some of the most potent blood magic in Europe for over a thousand years, but the Strazberg vault which held the knowledge of their blood magic was restricted to the Head and Heir of the family only, which meant that his lover wouldn't share it with him.

Gellert was nothing if not pragmatic though, and he reasoned that he could always find another lover, but the Strazberg Blood Magic could give him power over most witches and wizards if he could access it, so one night Otto Strazberg woke up tied to an alter stone. Otto tried everything he could think of to escape, but by the end of the ritual he was naught but an empty husk and Gellert Grindelwald had a magical signature that allowed him to be accepted by the Strazberg vault which held the scrolls and journals documenting the Strazberg Family magic. Gellert took took everything from the Strazberg vault when he was thrown out of Durmstrang and sent to Britain to live in Godric's Hollow with his Great-Aunt Bathilda Bagshot, and that's where he found his new lover.

Albus Dumbledore had just graduated from Hogwarts when Gellert was sent to live with his Great-Aunt, and they immediately gravitated towards each other. Albus and Gellert were much alike, attractive, charismatic boys with intellects far and above most in Magical Britain and towering egos which convinced them that they had the right to do whatever it took to make their ambitions come to fruition, because everyone else was beneath them.

Over the next year or so, Albus and Gellert mapped out their plans to rule the Magical world, using the Dumbledore Mind Magics, the Strazberg Blood Magic and the dark arts and rituals that Gellert had uncovered at Durmstrang to gain the power they needed. After the last of the Strazbergs was known to have died in the dark rituals he performed at Durmstrang, which meant that he would be watched by anyone from there or in the Confederation of Nordic Magical States, Gellert realised that they couldn't afford to let anyone discover that they were using the Strazberg Blood Magic to force people to do what they wanted.

It was Albus who came up with the solution for this, staging an event that publicly broke them up and eliminated most people who knew much about what they were doing (by killing off his family, but they botched killing his brother Aberforth so they had to use the mind magics and blood magics to manipulate his memories of what happened) and then launching a campaign to convince most people in Magical Europe and Britain believe that blood magic was only used in dark rituals and therefore needed to be banned. He chipped away at this for forty odd years, then when he rose to power in the Wizengamot of Magical Britain and the International Confederation of Wizards in the Forties he had blood magic made illegal in the Wizarding World and banned any works relating to it. What this meant was that Albus Dumbledore had an extensive library and decades of experience with using blood magic, but most Wizarding people didn't know how to recognise it if they uncovered evidence of it being used, so he'd been using blood magic to keep most people under control.

However there were other elements that Albus and Gellert never understood which limited the amount of control they had over others, namely the fact that most of the blood rituals had an element of soul magic to them, and soul magic only works properly with knowing and willing participation of those involved. Gellert and Albus had never really understood this, as in their minds the only thing that truly mattered was power (young Tom Riddle learnt this lesson well while he was under Albus' hand), but Albus did have some success in using the Dumbledore Mind Magics to warp the minds of those who followed him enough for the soul magic to have some effect.

He had been trying to decipher what Lily Potter had done to protect her son since November Eighty One, because she had not only derailed his plans to get rid of the Potters and claim everything they had, she had somehow managed to use her and her husband's willing sacrifice to stop something that was supposed to be unstoppable. He'd discovered remnants of blood runes on the infant after he had that oaf Hagrid bring the child to him, but he couldn't recognise the runes and hadn't managed to track down anything about them in the extensive libraries he'd…. collected… over the last century.

The reason this was relevant leading up to the Third Task was that Albus was using blood magic to ensure that the Third task went as planned. He knew that they wouldn't be allowed to have obviously lethal obstacles in the maze, so the default state of the creatures and other obstacles for the maze would be dangerous but not necessarily lethal. What wouldn't be shown though was the blood magic that changed that state according to who the champions, and him and Karkaroff because he knew there was a good chance they'd be forced to go through the maze first to prove that it was survivable, were when they actually encountered the creatures and other obstacles.

Unfortunately, with Bones' niece going through the maze first, he couldn't afford to make the obstacles more lethal for her until she was well into the maze, otherwise they'd be likely to stop the task before Potter got into the maze. He'd make it easier for Krum to make it look as though the maze was survivable. He'd let the Lovegood girl and Longbottom Heir get about halfway in before they were torn apart, give the Scamander Heir a bit of a chance to survive, have the Veela and Potter killed off a little way into the maze and go easy on the Davies boy to give the appearance that Krum had some competition… Merlin, he'd have to almost shut the obstacles down to give Davies a chance to make it through, he was such a pathetic excuse of a wizard! He couldn't afford to make it look that easy for himself and Karkaroff, but he would add triggers keyed to their blood signatures to make them non-lethal and limit the damage to something they would recover from.

The thing was, while Albus believed that no-one could work out what he was doing as he carefully formulated the blood magic that would be used to alter the behaviour of the creatures and other obstacles in the maze on the basis of the blood signatures of the ones entering the maze, everything he did and said was being recorded, and three of the best magical minds in centuries were working on reversing his plans, or at least levelling the playing field.

While they hadn't been compressing time anywhere near as much since they finished their year at Hogwarts, Harry, Hermione and Luna had effectively lived eleven years in the nearly three years since they started using the runic time chambers in their trunks, and with their intensity that was the equivalent of at least twenty years of magical study for anyone else. They had copies of all the blood magic tomes and scrolls that Dumbledore had hidden away, because the Unspeakable had ripped the information about their location and how to access them out of Dumbledore's mind when the Triwizard Tournament began, and over a year of study of the materials in real time meant that Harry, Hermione and Luna were far more knowledgeable on the subject than Dumbledore was now.

One thing the blood magic had allowed them to do was complete the tantric ritual that they'd been working on to enhance their power, bond, and ability to communicate and share power and talents with each other. This tantric ritual would only work for them, because it was tailored to require a metamorphmagus with all of Harry's talents, a veela and an earth mother, and they all needed to be very powerful and already have a strong bond with each other.

Hermione's earth mother talent had come through Helga Hufflepuff, and there were a very limited number of witches who had been identified as having this talent in the history of the Magical world. A large part of it was the ability to directly draw on ley line energy and channel it into other things, traditionally it had been used to grow things in the earth but it could also be used for other things, and their tantric ritual allowed Hermione to use this to make the three of them more powerful than any other group of witches and wizards on the planet if she could tap into ley lines. This would have obvious advantages in Magical combat, among other things.

The first time they did the ritual, they were all physically twenty or twenty one and it released a massive amount of Veela energy as Luna made her change into a full Veela, which enhanced all of them and their four familiars. Hedwig was larger and more like a Veela in her full Bennu form, but she could also change her public form at will, hold far more magical energy and her magical transports were essentially invisible and silent now. Crookshanks and the other Mngwa also held far more energy now, so they could 'jump' much further to go to one of their bonded if they were in trouble, had acquired the sphinxes' level of intelligence and capacity for human speech and their full Mngwa forms were larger and more fearsome and magically resistant. It also put an end to Harry, Hermione and Luna being betrothed, because the magical bonding changed their status to married. While they'd been expecting that to happen though, one thing was a surprise as they'd been expecting Hermione to become Duchess Potter and Luna Duchess Peverell when they married, but they were both recorded as Duchess Potter-Peverell.

They did the ritual a few more times, until they stopped getting any notable gains from it, but by then they were all much more powerful and had elements of each other's talents, and the level of their bond with each other and their familiars was incredible, they could communicate, share memories and magical power as if they were one entity.

As the Third Task drew near, Hermione was channelling more power into the wards around Hogwarts and the Forbidden Forest to block any and all wizarding portkeys and apparition to make sure that there were no traps to take anyone out of or bring anything else into the maze (they all had the locator runes from the locator bracelets in their communicator/portkey watches but it was better to have it play out where they had help right there), and they finalised their modifications to the blood magic on the creatures and obstacles in the maze. In the end, they decided that it would be poetic justice for the creatures and obstacles to react to Dumbledore and Karkaroff the way Dumbledore had been trying to set them to react to Harry, but the triggers relating to everyone else were removed, so they would behave as they were supposedly meant to for the actual competitors. The only magical signature showing on the blood magic placed on the creatures and other obstacles would be Dumbledore's, so the evidence would indicate that he'd apparently been trying to manipulate the obstacles and made a fatal mistake, getting what he wanted to use to protect himself mixed up with what he planned to use to kill off some of the competitors.

Sue would let Krum get ahead of her and they'd let him win if he could overcome the obstacles by himself. Sue, Luna and Neville and Rolf, Fleur and Harry would be going through the maze as two groups of three and watch out for each other, and Davies could go through by himself. They discussed warning Krum and Davies about the fact that the maze would probably be more dangerous than they expected, but decided that if they didn't get the hint from what happened when Dumbledore and Karkaroff went through in front of them, they were too stupid to deserve any more warnings.

On the day of the Third Task, Dumbledore, Karkaroff and most of the others from the original Triwizard Committee were looking smug, so it was fairly obvious what they were expecting to happen. Dumbledore and Karkaroff tried to act surprised and affronted when they were told that they would be going through the maze first to prove that it was survivable, but they couldn't keep the superior looks off their faces as they were sure they'd pulled the wool over everyone's eyes.

It was a little gruesome to watch the recordings as Dumbledore was sprayed with acid and died screaming because no-one could disable the mechanisms of the obstacle that he triggered and Karkaroff was screaming for someone to help him until he finally had his head ripped off by one of the Acromantulas that were fighting over him, but their aggression had been amplified by the blood magic so that they couldn't be stopped until they'd been blown apart. Listening to Dumbledore and Karkaroff's screaming was bad enough, but watching what happened on the displays was worse.

There was a delay as the mess was cleaned up, the obstacles that killed Dumbledore and Karkaroff were removed and the rest of the maze was tested for any more deadly traps. The Aurors who went through Dumbledore's chambers found his notes for what he'd been planning to cause the obstacles to do to each of the champions (it's not too hard to find something when you've seen where it was hidden) and reported that he'd apparently linked his and Karkaroff's blood signatures to what he was preparing for Duke Potter by mistake. The fun didn't stop there though, because one of the original Committee members was actually stupid enough to say that that wasn't the way it was supposed to happen and some of the others tried to shut him up, so they were arrested and dragged off to the DMLE's holding cells to be questioned.

Krum and Davies tried to argue that the task had obviously been sabotaged and had to be cancelled, but the last of the original committee members refused. They were furious that their plans to wipe out Harry and the others in this task had backfired because Dumbledore had screwed up, and they couldn't take it out on him any more, so they told Krum and Davies that they had two choices, either complete the Third Task or pull out and lose their magic. That had Krum being shouted at by the Bulgarian Magical Sports and Games representative, and the gist of what was being shouted was that if he did anything to jeopardise his magic, he better start running and never stop because they would never stop hunting him if he ruined their national team's chances.

Harry couldn't help laughing when Krum whined at the official in Bulgarian that it was supposed to have been set up so that he could get through safely, because the idiot had just confirmed in front of the DMLE and ICW observers that he knew that there had been plans to fix the third task of the Triwizard Tournament. The Bulgarian official was too angry to speak at that point, he just grabbed Krum's robes and dragged him over to where Harry, Luna, Susan, Neville, Fleur and Rolf were waiting near the entrance to the maze. The fact that Krum was the only competitor not covered from head to toe in dragonhide (except for the leather facing on their gloves to allow magic to pass through) made it obvious who hadn't been planning to actually compete in the third task. Some of the officials were muttering about not putting on the right sort of display when they were wearing those protective suits and robes but at least they were obviously ready to go into the maze.

Davies had been watching the recording of what happened to Dumbledore and Karkaroff over the officials' shoulders and he did something Harry never thought he'd see anyone from the Magical world do, he threw his wand on the table in front of his father and made sure everyone heard him. "I know you're going to say that the shame to the family of my giving up my magic would be worse than death, but after watching wizards like Dumbledore and Karkaroff getting killed that easily you can shove that up your arse Dad! I'm withdrawing from this bloody death trap! There's my wand, if the family honour is that important to you, you can take my place!"

With that, he turned and walked away quickly.

Davies' father was furious and he barked at Bagman to start the bloody task. Bagman looked at the other judges and they nodded, so he walked over to the competitors and asked if they were ready and when they said yes, made sure that they were in the order they'd be entering the maze, telling them that they'd be entering at one minute intervals. With one last look at the judges' table, he raised his wand and set off a cannon blast to send Susan into the maze.

Sue went a short way into the maze and then cast a notice-me-not charm over the entrance to an obvious dead end, staying hidden until after the second cannon blast went off and Krum ran past her. When the third cannon blast went off and Luna entered the maze, Sue joined her and they hugged each other as they waited for Neville to enter the maze. Neville hugged both girls when he joined them and they put their wands away, calling their heirloom swords to them before they headed off into the maze as they'd be going for power over finesse in there.

Rolf went just far enough into the maze to get out of sight of the entrance and exchanged his wand for the Scamander dagger, willing it into a half sword as he waited for Fleur. When Harry joined them a minute after Fleur with the Sword of Gryffindor in his hand, Fleur looked from their swords to the wand in her hand and shook her head ruefully but Harry laughed and said in French. "You may not have access to a magical sword Fleur, but don't forget you're Veela. If you keep your off hand ready to throw fireballs you'll be able to handle just about anything you come up against and Rolf and I will be right there with you." With that he gave her a hug, squeezed Rolf's shoulder and took the lead on the way into the maze.

A couple of minutes later, Harry started swearing about cowardly bastards and the others asked what the hell he was talking about, so he tersely explained that Krum had come running back out of the maze with some trolls on his heels and started throwing curses at Luna and the others as soon as he saw them. Luna disarmed him and bound him then she and the others dealt with the trolls before they went on… That had slowed them down a little so hopefully they'd catch up to them soon.

A few minutes later, they came across the bound Krum, mostly covered with the troll blood and gore that was splattered all abound him. Harry didn't slow down as he kicked the bastard in the ribs on the way past, but Fleur paused long enough to make sure she hit her target when she kicked him a bit lower than Harry had.

Most of the creatures and obstacles they came across were destroyed, because Hermione was channelling energy from the ley lines to Luna and Harry, so Luna was just blasting through the obstacles to get through quicker, but some of them had reset after they passed through, and Luna wouldn't harm a sphinx so they had to answer her riddles to get past her. The sphinx laughed when Harry offered her a place with the other sphinxes on the Potter estates, saying that his lady before him had already made that offer and she had now decided to accept.

There wasn't anything that could stop them in the maze, and Luna, Neville and Susan were waiting for them at the cup. They'd already decided what they were going to do, so Luna, Fleur and Rolf took the cup together to finish the tournament as a three way tie between Hogwarts, Beauxbatons and Durmstrang. The cup flashed but the wards had disabled the portkey, so they just levitated it in front of them as they walked back out of the maze, with Harry hanging back to portkey the sphinx off to Potter Manor and then return (goblin portkeys still worked, it was only wizarding ones that were blocked). Without the others seeing him do that, they could easily argue that the sphinx must have fallen victim to something in the maze because they'd had to deal with some of the trolls and Acromantulas left in the maze on the way back, in fact dealing with an Acromantula was what gave Harry the excuse to fall back in the first place. They gave Krum a few more kicks on the way past.

They'd gotten rid of their swords, thrown their hoods back and taken off their flying helmets and gloves by the time they exited the maze, so aside from the dragonhide robes, boots and such and the Triwizard Cup which was hanging in the air in front of them, they looked like a group of friends out for a stroll.

The Bulgarian official started demanding to know where Krum was and what they'd done to him when he realised that Krum wasn't with them, and he certainly didn't appreciate the answer he got from Luna. "He's still in the maze, he ran into us when he was running away from a couple of trolls, but as soon as he saw us he started throwing curses at us so I disarmed him and tied him up then we dealt with the trolls. He's still okay though because we checked on him on the way out of the maze."

The official pretty much started foaming at the mouth at that. "You lie witch! Krum is proud Bulgarian, Bulgarians do not run from danger and something like you could never handle anything he couldn't! You must have all colluded to prevent Krum winning as he should have, the Veela…" he waved at Fleur with a leer "must have used its talents to distract him so that the rest of you could disable him. I claim the Veela in his name for its part in the attack on Krum…."

The rest of his diatribe went unsaid as Harry put him down with a broken jaw at that point, sending a call to Hermione and Hedwig over their link to bring the Delacours and the ICW officials who were brought in to look into what killed Dumbledore and Karkaroff. He was shouting at the official to distract everyone while Hermione got them there, and to stop himself killing the pig for shouting at Luna like that, trying to claim Fleur, and trying to sell the Bulgarian Veela off at the Quidditch World Cup Final, because when he called Fleur 'the Veela' like that, Harry realised why his voice had sounded familiar, this was the one he'd heard making the deal to sell the Bulgarian Veela to the Purebloods. "Your life is mine pig! Even a goat molesting inbred retard from the hills of a backwards country like your's should know that the penalty for attacking the wife of a recognised Duke is death…. However, as you have also attempted to claim the daughter and Heiress of Comte Louis Delacour, Chef de la Noblesse Ancienne Famille de Delacour and Ministre de la Ministère des Affaires Magiques de la France, so I will no doubt have to bow to Comte Delacour's superior case to finish you. Therefore I will have to show you my displeasure before he manages to get here to claim that right." He gave the pig a few good kicks in the ribs and softer places to punctuate his points.

By the time the Delacours and ICW officials arrived, the pig was curled up in a foetal position, begging him to stop, but he didn't stop shouting and kicking him until the ICW official respectfully asked him to (unlike the Ministry minder for the Bulgarian National Quidditch team, they were well aware of who he was). Harry stepped back and straightened his robes, casting a wandless non-verbal scourgify over himself and another charm to tidy his hair so that he suddenly presented a regal but martial figure as he waved at the Bulgarian official. "Comte Delacour, Comtesse Delacour, do you recognise this from the Quidditch World Cup Final here in Britain last year?"

Louis looked hard at the wizard on the ground and nodded. "Oui, he was introduced as a representative of Bulgaria's Magical Sports and Games Department." Apolline also nodded. "Oui."

Harry looked at Apolline. "Comtesse Delacour, do you remember the other matter that Clan Overchief Gringott's Heir assisted you with at the World Cup Final?"

Her face hardened. "Oui!"

Harry nodded. "This is the pig I overheard making that deal!"

Louis was well aware of what deal Harry was referring to, so he grabbed his wife to stop her attacking the pig, but his face hardened as well.

Harry turned to the ICW officials. "It is still a criminal offence to sell unwilling witches and wizards who are citizens of states which are members of the International Confederation of Wizards into sexual or other slavery, is it not?"

"Of course it is Duke Potter, but what are you talking about?"

"At the Quidditch World Cup Final here in Britain last year, I overheard this pig making a deal to sell the Veela who were the Bulgarian team's mascots off to the rabid pigs who were planning to stage the attack that happened at the site after the match. I advised Comtesse Delacour, as a representative of the Veela Councils, of what I'd heard and the Heir to the Clan Overchief of the Goblin Nations, who was attending the World Cup Final with us, assisted Comtesse Delacour in getting the young ladies to safety outside of Britain. We did not follow the matter up at the time, because my overhearing an unknown voice making the deal would not have been accepted as sufficient proof of the crime in court, but he has just attacked my wife, Duchess Luna Potter Peverell, and tried to claim Baroness Delacour, Heiress of Comte Louis Delacour, Chef de la Noblesse Ancienne Famille de Delacour and Ministre de la Ministère des Affaires Magiques de la France, on behalf of the pig who's still tied up in the maze because he attacked my wife, the Countess Bones and Baron Longbottom when he saw them while he was running away from the trolls he encountered in the maze, so we now have ample evidence to charge him and have him questioned under Veritaserum, as well as looking into his finances because I'm sure that most of the Hundred odd Thousand Galleons he took as payment for the two dozen Veela he sold at the World Cup Final would have ended up in his vaults. As I said to this pig, I am willing to yield to the superior claim of Comte Delacour for justice, but if we can find sufficient evidence of the attempt to sell those young Veela into slavery, I believe that the Veela Councils will have the strongest claim..."

Apolline was a frightening sight as she struggled to hold to her human form in her rage, but she managed to bite out "Oui! The Councils have first claim!" in a harsh voice due to her semi transformed state.

The ICW officials looked grim as they slapped shackles on the Bulgarian official (Harry had to smile as he saw that they were the ICW's versions of the DMLE's locator bracelets) while other officials ran into the maze to collect Krum. The press got some good pictures of the bound Krum being levitated out of the maze covered in troll gore. Frank stopped Davies and the other Triwizard Committee members stomping off in a huff before they presented the prize to Luna, Fleur and Rolf as the joint winners of the Triwizard Tournament. The pictures in the newspapers made it clear just how much they hated being forced to make the presentations, along with their outrage at being taken into custody by the DMLE before they could leave.

The most surprising part of that was that about half of them had actually believed that they'd be able to get away with what they'd planned and done with the Triwizard Tournament. They couldn't understand that the protections they'd written into the Triwizard contracts finished the moment the tournament did, that the current heads of state of Magical Britain and France and the directors of Magical Britain's Departments of Magical Law Enforcement and Magical Creatures would never allow them to get away with trying to kill their heirs and ward, or that Duke Potter-Black, the famous Boy-Who-Lived, would never let them get away with trying to harm his wife and friends, or himself for that matter. That level of stupidity rather proved that the inbreeding that the Traditional Purebloods clung to was a very bad idea.

The 'World Cup Scandal' bankrupted the government of Magical Bulgaria, and many government officials and most of the Bulgarian National Quidditch Team were imprisoned for what they arrogantly admitted doing to the Veela attached to the Quidditch Team and other Veela in Bulgaria. They were still refusing to accept that the ICW's laws protecting citizens of ICW member states had primacy over the laws they'd passed in Bulgaria giving them the right to do whatever they liked there, because they'd broken the ICW's laws outside of Bulgaria, while they were being dragged away. The ICW made sure that the ones who took over from the outed government knew that it would be keeping a close eye on them, and would step in if they allowed things to go the way they had before. Bulgaria had just started making a name for itself as a player on the world sporting stage with its national Quidditch team, so it didn't take much for it to fall back into the position of just one of the many European pocket states that made up the bulk of the ICW.

The ones who'd hidden behind the Triwizard Tournament's magical contract protections were also destroyed. The evidence collected through the tournament was proof of their plans to kill off the heirs and wards of those who were taking away their control of the various governments and Harry, Luna, Susan, Neville and Fleur all held high enough status under the old laws for the penalty to be death and forfeiture of everything they owned. The ones who'd been using the contracts for protection had been weak and self serving for the most part, so they'd given up the real players behind the plan in an attempt to save themselves and they were taken down as well.

In the end, the machinations behind the Triwizard Tournament were what broke the stranglehold the 'Traditional' Purebloods had on Magical Britain. They had thrown everything they had behind it, hoping that the loss of the last of their lines would break the strongest of the Druid Houses and then the others would fall to the pressure they brought to bear, but what happened was that the traditional Pureblood Houses were the ones who were broken and eradicated. Powerful Death Eaters and Pureblood bigots were finally being prosecuted for their crimes, their names were eradicated in Magical Britain and their titles, seats and everything else they owned were forfeited to their victims, who were largely Muggleborn or Half-Blood.

This resulted in the Muggleborn and Half-Bloods who had been abused and reviled by the Purebloods getting a stronger foothold in the Wizengamot and Ministry, so the Druids and the Progressives (many of them Muggleborn and Half-Blood) had control of the Wizengamot and the addendums and guidelines that the Purebloods had used to weight everything in the Ministry in their favour were all thrown out, so the original regulations that stipulated that witches and wizards would be hired and promoted on the basis of ability and qualifications once again applied.

In the space of a few short years, the Druids had reclaimed their role of guiding Magical Britain and traditional Purebloods had become a very vocal minority whose main argument was. 'I don't like it so things must go back to the way they were!' Many of the Pureblood families who still had any sort of holdings in the old countries left Magical Britain, choosing to salve their egos by being big fish in little ponds rather than admit that they were wrong and needed to change their stance on controversial issues.

The Druid Houses and Families who built Magical Britain had begun turning the tables on the so-called 'Traditional' Houses the day that Minerva took Harry to Gringotts. The Goblin Nation maintained far more detailed and accurate records of the identities and location of everyone associated with Magical Britain than the Ministry did, so they knew where to find the ones who had been pushed out of Magical Britain, the Squibs, Muggle-Born, Muggle-Raised, Half-Bloods, Half-Breeds, Werewolves, House Elves who had been cast out and the rest. Most of them were struggling because they lacked magical or non-magical education (or both), and many lacked the identification they needed to establish themselves in the non-magical world in order to make a decent living, so they eagerly accepted everything the Druids offered, jobs, housing, education, identification, medical attention, Wolfsbane and other treatments they needed, everything they needed and deserved to make decent lives for themselves. Most of those moving into this new world knew others who were struggling, and they were also given assistance to get out of the situations they had been forced into, many abused house elves suddenly became unable to fulfil their duties so they were cast out and many Muggle-born and Muggle-Raised disappeared from their menial jobs and the hovels that they spent most of their wages renting.

Their Pureblood employers were quite put out that they had to pay more for far less capable Purebloods to replace the Muggle Born and Raised rabble who had previously done all the work, as their businesses started to fail because they were losing money. Those same Purebloods were often the landlords of the slums the Muggle Born and Raised had been forced to live in and they couldn't get anyone else to rent the hovels the Muggle Born and Raised had had to accept, so they either had to spend money they no longer had improving them or sell them at a loss. Few of them noticed that these properties often disappeared soon after they were sold, because charms were cast to hide them before they were fixed up to provide suitable housing for people. The same was done with the business premises after their businesses went belly up and were sold off.

These people now lived and worked in Druid owned properties and businesses hidden in the shadows between the Magical and Non-Magical worlds, so for all intents and purposes they remained invisible to the Magical world, and the Non-Magical world as well to a large degree, but while invisible, this Shadow Britain very quickly grew to be bigger and more prosperous than Magical Britain because it was made up of people who were more capable than many in Magical Britain, and eager to prove themselves now that they were being offered the chance. More than a few of the Muggle Born and Raised's families moved into this new world with them, bringing much needed skills to get the businesses and institutions established and working properly. Many of the ones who moved into Shadow Britain were also willing and eager to do something about the real problems of Magical Britain that the Purebloods in charge refused to do anything about, the rogue werewolves who had attacked and turned many of them and the Death Eaters and other thugs who preyed on the innocent with impunity, as they were protected by their 'Pureblood' status.

The beauty of this was that these activities were largely ignored, the fact that werewolf attacks had all but disappeared went unnoticed by most and the criminal elements that the Death Eaters and other thugs worked for generally didn't report anything to the authorities when they disappeared. The wealthier Death Eaters and their ilk who were behind some of the criminal enterprises did demand that something be done to stop the disappearances, but most of those who 'disappeared' had been arrested quite often, only to be let off due to political pressure, so the DMLE generally just filed the demands to track down those responsible for their disappearances away with all the records of the arrests that they'd been forced to drop, happy to be able to close the books on them. Some in the DMLE did look into the matter quietly, but with a eye to helping the ones who were doing the job that they'd been prevented doing, and this in turn led to a number of Aurors, Hitwizards and Magical Law Enforcement Patrol Officers retiring or otherwise leaving the DMLE so that they could help train and lead the Shadowbrits in their activities. They also helped clean out some of the filth of Non-Magical Britain, mostly the ones working for the Purebloods' criminal enterprises that had spread into the Non-Magical world but incorrigible and vicious Non-Magical criminals who used loopholes in the law to escape retribution for their crimes were often dealt with when they came across them, these were generally set up to look like they'd been taken out by their criminal rivals.

Remus Lupin had thought long and hard after he was forced to finally open his eyes and see Albus Dumbledore for what he really was, but Minerva and the others had been disgusted enough by his refusal to accept what was right in front of him that they didn't try to stop Dumbledore dismissing him at the end of the school year. Sirius was desperate to hang onto the last person he had left from the only happy period of his life though so he took Remus on as a Thane of the Most Noble and Most Ancient Druid House of Black and its Associated Houses, assisting Andi as its Steward. Harry didn't have many happy memories to offset Lupin's blindly following Dumbledore and abandoning him, so he wasn't as willing to accept Lupin back into his life... he was quite happy for Sirius to have his friend back but he didn't want to deal with him. He and the girls did accept Lupin as a Thane for the Most Noble and Most Ancient Druid House of Potter, Junior Noble and Ancient Druid Houses of Dagworth-Granger and Lovegood and their Associated Houses though, to help take some of the load off of Auntie Andi if nothing else.

About six months after Lupin became a Thane of their Houses, they acquired another Thane, Narcissa Black. Six months of sitting alone in the house she was allocated with nothing to do but needlepoint and examine her life choices was more than enough to make Narcissa re-evaluate her life and position and she went to Sirius to beg for a chance to prove that she was a true and worthy daughter of the House of Black. Sirius had the Black Family Magic judge Narcissa and it found that she honestly wanted to redeem herself, so he accepted her back into the House of Black, allocating her a Black Baronetess title to give her the standing she needed to deal with the hidebound Pureblood Noble Houses (as the last Lupin, Remus was Laird Lupin, Head of the Ancient Druid Family of Lupin, so he had the requisite title, and word soon got around that any idiots who refused to deal with him because he was a werewolf lost the lucrative business of the Houses of Black and Potter so the sensible ones 'ignored' his status as a werewolf). Like Remus, Narcissa was a Thane for the Black, Potter, Dagworth-Granger and Lovegood Houses and having two such capable deputies took a lot of the load off Andi, as Steward of the four Houses.

Remus had been the 'brain' behind the Marauders and while he wasn't a patch on Lily Evans or Pandora Cathbad, he had been head and shoulders above everyone else at Hogwarts. The stigma of being a werewolf and not having non-magical education credentials blocked him from being as successful as he should have been in either the Magical or Non-Magical worlds, but when given a chance to show what he could do he was exceedingly capable, and like Narcissa, he was driven to prove himself and make up for the mistakes he had made in blindly following Dumbledore.

Narcissa was just as intelligent as her older sisters Andromeda and Bellatrix (Bellatrix Black had been a brilliant witch, it was generally accepted that it was her treatment by her husband and his family after her parents made her accept the arranged marriage to Rodolphus Lestrange that Andromeda ran away from that had driven her crazy), and like them had received extensive training in Noble House etiquette and politics and estate management. She had been the one responsible for the political and financial success of the House of Malfoy, so she made a very valuable addition to the team managing their four houses…. she still retained some of the blood bias that had been drilled into her as a child but was sensible enough to recognise that there was no real basis for it and tried to put it behind her in her dealings with the rest of the family.

With two exceptional daughters of the House of Black and the brain of the Marauders (not to mention Harry, Hermione and Luna, the brilliant children of the two most brilliant witches in Magical Britain in Centuries and another one just as brilliant) in the core team managing their recovery, the Druid Houses were doing quite well, and as they claimed the assets of the Pureblood Houses they took down and undermined Pureblood businesses in the rest of Magical Britain so that they could be bought out cheaply, Shadow Britain quickly grew into a thriving and prosperous entity.

The Purebloods riding roughshod over Magical Britain couldn't see what was happening, but the rest of the Magical world could, because there was a sudden upturn in innovative and quality magical products and supplies coming out of Britain that were priced well enough to take business away from competing products that were made locally unless there were legal protections blocking foreign products, and even there the quality was often good enough to justify paying the higher prices created by the government tariffs. The magical conversions of electrical products probably amused the Magical world the most though, because the developments which allowed these to be eagerly embraced by the rest of the Magical world were apparently coming from the country that continued to ban their use, Magical Britain.

The Shadow world wasn't limited to Britain though, the Houses of Potter and Black had extensive holdings right across the Magical World and Duke Potter was recognised by every Goblin Nation, so the disaffected of the Magical World were being given sanctuary in every country where they had enough presence to provide support and Shadow Nations grew between the Magical and Non-Magical world in countries where there were more disaffected. After the Triwizard Tournament Final and the trials that decimated Magical Bulgaria, the Veela Councils demanded that they be recognised as the Veela Nations by the ICW, and once they were officially recognised, they and the Goblin Nations proposed that the International Confederation of Wizards be redefined as the International Confederation of Magical Nations, with all Magical Nations having equal representation in the Confederation.

The International Confederation of Magical Nations was, of course, a much harder sell, but with the support of the new governments of Magical Britain and Magical France supporting the proposal, along with the Confederation of Nordic Magical States and the quiet threat of financial ruin for the Magical World unless it was given fair and honest consideration, the matter was being seriously debated. It was actually the Goblin Nations who insisted that the Shadow Nations be included in this consideration, because they represented a genuine melding of multiple Magical and Non-Magical cultures and were the Elves and Dwarves' de-facto nations, the Veela immediately got behind this so the Shadow Nations were formally recognised as Magical Nations by the ICW as the debate continued.

As the Druids and Progressives gained control of Magical Britain's Wizengamot and Ministry, better qualified Muggle-Born and Half-Blood witches and wizards were taking over jobs that had up until now been filled by Purebloods under the 'guidelines' that had been put in place to guarantee Pureblood employment. Many of these witches and wizards were coming back from Shadow Britain, with the Goblin Nations providing the necessary parchment trails to show that they'd been working for business interests and institutions elsewhere in the Magical world. They were slowly but surely pushing the Pureblood bigots out of their positions of power, and one of their biggest milestones had been when Newt Scamander came out of retirement to take over as Director of the renamed Department of Magical Creatures in September Ninety Three, as this allowed them to start pushing to repeal the restrictive and abusive laws against other magical beings and magical creatures.

Harry kept his word and he and the girls took up their positions in Magical Britain again once the worst of the Pureblood bigots had been cleaned out, but they spent most of their time and lived in their other estates around the world, especially those in the tropics and Australia, because they were much nicer places to raise a family than Britain. Both Hermione and Luna became pregnant in their first tantric bonding ritual, but if they do it early enough Veela can put their pregnancy into stasis until it's safe to proceed with and Luna shared that ability with Hermione, so they both put their pregnancies on hold until after the Tournament had finished.

Neville, Susan and Megan officially returned to Magical Britain after they got their NEWTs at Beauxbatons and were married, with Susan becoming Countess Bones-Longbottom and Megan becoming Baroness Longbottom…. Megan would be Countess Longbottom when Neville became Head of the House of Longbottom. While they were officially residing in Magical Britain and Neville was managing some of the House of Longbottom's interests there, they were spending a lot of time with Harry, Hermione and Luna in the tropics and once Neville had his Mastery in Herbology he was overseeing the Herbology side of the world wide chain of Shamrock Farm potions ingredients farms that he, Luna and Harry had established together after they started at Hogwarts, Luna and her father Xeno were overseeing the creature side of the farms between them. They'd originally come up with the idea for Shamrock Farm to keep Xeno busy so that he wouldn't spend as much time agonising about losing Pandora, but the farms grew into an enterprise that was supplying most of the ingredients for the potions businesses that were operating in the Shadow Nations, so it had turned into an extremely lucrative business venture.

Hermione and Luna both gave birth to fraternal twins in December Nineteen Ninety Four, Hermione was effectively Twenty Three, Harry was Twenty Two and Luna was nearly Twenty Two at the time, even though chronologically they were only Fourteen, Thirteen and nearly Thirteen. Hermione had Lily Jean and Puck James Potter-Peverell (Hermione went along with Harry's argument that as both of their fathers were called James, another name was needed and Puck would at the same time honour the Shakespearean origin of her name and his father's trickster nature). Luna had Pandora Dorea and Ignatius Charlus Potter-Peverell, as they'd agreed that it would be fitting for the next Duke Peverell to have his Peverell ancestor's name. The thousand year old Potter family charter dictated that Puck would be the next Duke Potter and he was identified as Earl Gryffindor at birth, just as Iggy was identified as Earl Slytherin. Lily would be the next Countess Hufflepuff and Baroness Dagworth-Granger at birth while Pandora would be the next Countess Ravenclaw and Baroness Lovegood at birth (because Xeno had formally abdicated the titles of Baroness Lovegood and Head of the Noble and Ancient Druid House of Lovegood to Luna as soon as her real age reached Fourteen). They would decide how they would divvy up their other titles when they found out whether they were having more children. Both Lily and Puck tended towards Hermione's features and curly hair, but with Harry's hair and eye colour, so Lily would look very much like a curlier haired version of her grandmother when she grew up while Puck would look much like his father. Pan and Iggy, however, mostly took after Luna in features and white blonde hair colour, with Harry's eye colour and untamed hair.

Apolline Delacour explained to them that Pandora would be a Veela, but the only time Veela ever had male children was as part of fraternal twins like this, and any sort of twins were a rare occurrence for Veela. She also explained that male Veela children never became full Veela and received very little of the Veela abilities…. if he was powerful as Harry and Luna's child was bound to be, he may be able to transform his hands and throw Veela fireballs, have a limited form of Veela allure, resistance to burns, healing abilities and the like, but aside from that he would be limited to whatever wizarding talents he inherited from the two of them. Apolline snorted in a rather unladylike manner at that and added. "So he'll probably be one of the most powerful wizards of his generation!"

There was never any question of that, because all four of their children were displaying their magic by the time they were two or three months old. As expected, they were all walking, talking and potty trained well before their first birthdays and generally being little terrors that their parents and everyone else in the family doted on. Luckily, it didn't take long for word to get around about the responses received by those who were arrogant and stupid enough to propose betrothal contracts with what were effectively the Princes and Princesses of the Magical World, and the fact that they had been delivered a few days before the full moon by rather scary looking werewolves, who advised that they would return in a few days to answer any questions they may have. Strangely enough, any and all interest in establishing betrothal contracts with Harry, Hermione and Luna's children quickly dried up after that.

The harsh penalties being imposed on witches and wizards for the mistreatment or abuse of elves in Magical Britain, Magical France, the Nordic Confederation and other progressive Magical Nations pushed the ICW to ratify these with international laws (it would take over a year for the change to the International Confederation of Magical Nations to occur). Strict enforcement of these penalties meant that casting elves out if their masters or mistresses were unhappy with them was a far safer practice than abusing them, so by the end of Nineteen Ninety Four the vast majority of House Elves were citizens of the Shadow Nations, and the only way most witches and wizards could make use of their services was to hire their services through House Elf Location and Placement agencies with magical contracts which laid out the terms of their work requirements and treatment and the penalties if any of the conditions were breached. The fee for their services didn't amount to much, but the penalties for overworking or abusing them were quite severe and those with a history of abusing elves were rejected out of hand, so many witches and wizards lost the services of House Elves forever when they lost their elves for abusing them. Even with the low rates though, the HELP agencies were quite profitable businesses, and most of them belonged to the Houses of Potter and Black, which gave them the funding to continue many other initiatives they were involved with.

With the Magical World (well... Wizarding World really, they claimed to encompass all magic but ignored other magical beings) being as resistant to change as it was, very few could understand how Harry Potter and his family had managed to turn it on its head in just three years or so, because most of them couldn't accept the evidence that they'd actually lived over eleven and a half years in that time and so had many of the other people that they'd been working with over the period. Even though Harry's birth date was July 31st 1980, anyone who saw and dealt with him could see that he was an extremely fit, intelligent and powerful wizard in his early twenties with over two decades of education and life experience, and both of his Duchesses matched him in that.

As they'd noted time and again though, good sense was a scarce resource in the Wizarding world. There were numerous attempts to kidnap or get rid of members of the leading Druid Families, especially after the Potter-Peverell children were born, but they were put down fast and hard every time and the ones behind the attempts were dealt with through the Wizengamot or ICW, which just brought the end of the 'Traditional Pureblood' families closer each time...

Remus Lupin was about the only one in the family who really liked Bob Dylan, but Mister Dylan was certainly right about one thing…. The Times, They Are a-Changin'.

Fin

A/N: And that's it folks. I can't see any point dragging the story out any further as this seems a logical finishing point for me.

I expect that this will probably irritate some people, but I won't be marking the story as 'Completed' because that seems to attract the trolls, and I've had it with dealing with trolls.

I hope people enjoyed the story, but if not there are hundreds of other writers on this site so I'm sure you'll find something you like if you look around a bit.

All the best.