Drifting unnoticed high above in the Great Hall, Peeves watched with growing frustration at how three pieces of parchment appeared, one after the other, from the Goblet of Fire. This magical ceremony was observed with equally fascinated attention but much less annoyance by the large crowd of Hogwarts students, staff, and castle visitors clustered below the troublemaking spirit who'd been happily tormenting his usual human targets ever since the construction of Hogwarts a thousand years ago. Ordinarily, Peeves would have seized at once the chance to sow some glorious chaos among the many people now together in the room, but not with Headmaster Dumbledore there overseeing everything. That tremendously powerful wizard, along with the grim ghost known as the Bloody Baron, were the only two inhabitants of the castle that could control to some extent Peeves' spiteful behavior.

When the final name had been read from the third piece of parchment, everyone in their chairs or on their feet seemed to relax in the expectation that it was all over. Even Peeves was about to depart from the Great Hall to go find some other opportunity to get into mischief elsewhere in the castle. However, from the Goblet of Fire, an entirely unforeseen torrent of glowing, mystical energy burst forth, accompanied by yet another parchment page. This scrap of paper rose to float in the air above the gaping crowd, who included the Headmaster himself.

From his present spot midway between the student tables where he'd been walking towards his own chair at the far end of the hall, Albus Dumbledore abruptly spun around to stare in absolute astonishment at the declaration of yet another champion for the Triwizard Tournament. Held frozen by his sheer disbelief, this elderly man's stunned immobility was noticed by Peeves still hovering near the Great Hall's ceiling. An instant decision was then made by Peeves that he'd never forgive himself if he passed up this opportunity to have a little fun.

With a gleeful snicker escaping from his lips, the poltergeist swooped downwards, right at the piece of parchment now beginning to inexorably descend to the castle floor. Peeves moved so swiftly in his flight that the parchment managed to sink only a few more feet before the little ghost had snatched with both hands his new prize. Coming to a stop in the air, Peeves held up over his head the parchment for everybody to see while triumphantly crowing, "Peeves, Peeves, is the best of them all! From fire this came, to fire this goes!"

Before anyone there could react fast enough to prevent what came next from happening, magical flames erupted from Peeves' fingers, completely consuming the piece of parchment and leaving not a single speck of ashes as evidence that this communication from the Goblet of Fire in fact had existed a moment before.

Sticking his tongue out at the shocked throng while he enjoyed their dumbfounded expressions, Peeves then whooped with wicked delight as he zoomed away in the air from his previous position. Executing a perfect victory roll in his flight, Peeves disappeared through the far wall of the Great Hall.

The above was done just in time before the room went mad. People there yelled in their amazement, turned to their friends by them and discussed at the top of their lungs what'd just occurred, or shouted at someone who might know concerning what to do now. Only two occupants of the Hogwarts gathering place remained silent at this moment.

Headmaster Dumbledore kept staring numbly at the part of the room's air where the Goblet of Fire's latest parchment had been wholly destroyed without anyone reading it, beyond any possible mending or restoration by his best Reparo spell. This blank contemplation went on while the noise level in the Great Hall continued to increase and even when a good many people there tried unavailingly to get his attention.

In another section of the castle's chamber among the uproar, Barty Crouch Jr. in his Polyjuiced form of Mad-Eye Moody knew he was doomed, one way or the other. This Death Eater's scheme to get Harry Potter into the Triwizard Tournament so that his master Voldemort could regain his full powers had just utterly failed. In turn, the Dark Lord would surely make Barty pay for this fiasco with nothing less than the minion's life taken with all the pain Voldemort could inflict over a long, long time. Clutching at his chest where a heart was hammering away in supreme terror, Barty actually welcomed the massive heart attack which occurred several seconds later.

With all the confusion, it took at least a minute or two for anybody to notice the crumpled body lying lifelessly on the castle tiles. By the time Madam Pomfrey, Hogwarts' school nurse, was summoned, there was nothing to do but to take the corpse away from the appalled gazes of an entire room. However, an hour afterwards, Pomfrey's own nerves were badly shaken by having the body in her care magically transform back into someone she didn't recognize. The nurse tried to inform Dumbledore about this, but the Headmaster was busy holding a private conference with the other school leaders and the Tournament officials crammed together in his sealed-off tower office over how to best proceed with this contest.

Nobody arguing in Dumbledore's office knew exactly as to what effect the destroyed parchment would have upon the Tournament. It'd never happened before in all the previous competitions, so they were all at somewhat of a loss. Would whoever unknown entrant that had their name on this piece of paper find himself or herself in the Tournament, whether they wanted to or not? Or, since the name hadn't been formally announced, would this mean the possible candidate under the laws of magic could avoid participating? In any case, Dumbledore had no time to currently speak with Madam Pomfrey, regardless of the tragedy which had overcome his old friend Moody.

Having no other recourse, the nurse sent a message to the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, along with a picture of the dead wizard laid out in one of her hospital beds. This resulted in Amelia Bones, head of the DMLE, quickly paying a personal visit plus bringing with her a squad of the department's finest Aurors, all of them quite keen to learn just why someone who should be properly rotting in Azkaban Prison for life had instead shown up as one of their own in Hogwarts, no less. And just where was this missing former Auror, anyway?

By the time Dumbledore wrapped up his frustrating office conference, things had gone too far for him to ever forestall, no matter how hard he tried. Madam Bones, with the bit between her teeth, uncovered the plot between Barty and his father to substitute the son for his mother in Azkaban, located and retrieved an unconscious Moody from the fake's ever-expanding chest in the staff quarters, and declared the whole of Hogwarts a crime scene. This further lead to even more embarrassing details over the past years concerning the Headmaster's odd actions during various recent upheavals in the castle, such as the Basilisk, Sirius Black's innocence, and Voldemort's own tenure as one of the staff teachers.

In a scandal which rocked the entire wizarding world, Dumbledore was sacked from his headmaster position, not to mention losing all his other political titles. A quick no-confidence vote against Fudge in the Wizengamot due to this man's revealed incredible incompetence also had him out, too. Madam Bones gracefully accepted the position of pro-tem Minister of Magic until elections could be held. In the meantime, now that Fudge's corrupt interference against the proper way to combat Death Eater scum was finished, the DMLE could now start cleaning house against those wizarding terrorists.

Minerva McGonagall, in her own new position as Hogwarts Headmistress, also went through the castle like an avenging angel. Dealt with first of all was the issue of the Triwizard Tournament, a most disagreeable matter in this woman's opinion. Whatever had Dumbledore been thinking, promoting such a dangerous event on Hogwarts grounds? Well, after laying down the law in a genuine no-nonsense attitude to the other school administrators and the contest officials, McGonagall organized a far safer Exploding Snap game between the three named participants in the Great Hall. It was won by Fleur Delacour from Beauxbatons Academy with Cedric Diggory coming in second and a very grumpy Viktor Krum in the last position. Despite a good many peoples' worries, nothing dreadful at all took place as a result of such a trivial outcome for the Triwizard Tournament. This also included a total lack of any potential magical retribution from the Goblet of Fire for the still-unknown entrant whose anonymous application had been burned by Peeves.

Once it was over and done with and the other departing schools had been waved farewell with enthusiastic good-byes while they left, the Headmistress got busy in carrying out what else she'd yearned for in her decades-long private fantasies concerning Hogwarts. Binns the ghost was sent off to the great beyond, Sybil Trelawney was firmly retired, and Snape got menacingly told that either he started teaching for real and stopped favoring his Slytherin house, or he'd be shoved head-first into a boiling cauldron holding one of his most foul potions. Many more improvements soon upgraded the school curriculum beyond measure, even when other, more significant events were taking place far away from the Scots castle.

Where he'd been lurking in the dungeons below Malfoy Manor after switching his hiding place from the Crouch residence just in time to escape being discovered there when the Aurors came calling after the son's death at Hogwarts, Voldemort was of several opinions about the recent events. Dumbledore's disgrace and loss of political power was definitely a success for the Dark Lord, making it much easier for him in the future to conquer the wizarding world when Voldemort eventually made his move upon the Ministry of Magic. However, it had been necessary for the Triwizard Tournament to finish with Harry Potter becoming a prisoner of the Death Eaters so that the proper spells could then be cast to turn He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named's pathetic, feeble form of a wizened mannikin into a more fearsome adult villain in fine fettle. Yet from all the barely credible news being reported from Hogwarts, this evil plan had apparently been ruined by a single idiotic poltergeist!

It was clear to Voldemort that he needed to discover the exact truth about just what had taken place at the castle. Summoning Wormtail from this traitor's usual job of milking the venom provided by the enormous snake Nagini which was the sole thing keeping Voldemort alive, a monster who'd once been named Tom Riddle told Peter Pettigrew to get as close to Hogwarts as he could while remaining a human. Then, this animagus was to sneak into there as a rat to investigate the new changes at the castle. Furthermore, Wormtail was to find out any weaknesses which would help the Death Eaters try again to abduct Harry Potter.

Sending off an apprehensive Peter with a few Crucios painfully inflicted upon that cowardly wizard in order to remind him to keep his mind on the job, Voldemort went back to brooding in his lair. Cared for by the remaining Death Eater underlings, the Dark Lord had more important things to think about than this contemptible Wormtail's responsibilities which included the tending and feeding of Nagini.

Unfortunately, while Pettigrew's task of extracting Nagini's venom was adequately accomplished by the nearest junior Death Eater selected at random and ordered to do it or else, this trembling pureblood supremacist otherwise stayed away from that dangerous reptile as much as possible. This meant that nobody at Malfoy Manor realized Nagini was becoming hungrier and hungrier due to having her feeding schedule accidentally terminated. Soon enough, Nagini ultimately gave into her starvation and slithered out of this snake's pen on a search for sustenance of some kind, roaming through the dungeons until she came across the dank room where Voldemort was lost in thought in a low chair well after midnight. In her ravenous mood, Nagini had lost any loyalty to her master and now considered him nothing but prey.

Just barely capable of lifting his diminished head to glare at where Nagini curled up in her coils on the floor in front of the chair was beadily regarding him as if he were an actual meal, Voldemort started to order this snake back to her quarters. Then, he'd properly punish the Death Eater responsible for her escape! That never had time to happen, though.

In a lightning-quick lunge, Nagini thrust her head and upper body forward to then open her fanged mouth as wide as it'd go, which led to this snake likewise speedily sinking her poisonous teeth deep into an horrified Voldemort's torso, fatally piercing his heart. In the last second of his newest life, the Dark Lord discovered just why it was a very bad idea to put one of his horcruxes into an apex predator.

But, that wasn't the end of it. When Voldemort died once again since an infamous Halloween in 1981, this time the consequences were far more magically disruptive than before and in addition spread out through a much wider area of the country.

In a tremendous blast of dark energies which disintegrated Nagini's horcrux-possessed body, this annihilation of the entire dungeon area undermined Malfoy Manor enough so that the whole building collapsed onto itself. In the ruins of his home, a badly-injured Lucius Malfoy shrieked with agony until an overwhelming wave of searing pain in excess of such minor hurts as broken bones and ruptured organs stifled his screams forever. This new and fatal distress came from the man's Dark Mark which Voldemort earlier branded onto his followers' arms. That same magical tattoo had been connected to the life force of their master, and now that he'd just been killed by a former piece of his soul, Voldemort's death was also similarly wreaked upon these adherents through their Dark Marks.

All over wizarding Britain, various men and women died. It happened in their homes, in Diagon Alley, in the Ministry of Magic, at Azkaban, and many other places mostly out of sight from the muggles. In the non-magical world, a few areas did have some oddly-dressed people inexplicably falling dead in front of shocked mundanes, but these witnesses would in the main be quickly be oblivated into forgetfulness by an overworked Auror Corps. That same magical police force was too busy rushing around the country collecting the bodies of diverse Death Eaters to ever bother investigating a minor mystery involving an large explosion demolishing the remote shack of a long-extinct wizarding family formerly known as the Gaunts.

Several other detonations occurred where no one was around to notice them. In Gringotts the goblin bank, the Lestrange vault solidly stood without giving any indication of the devastation which had just been wrought within due to the destruction of a centuries-old cup. Inside 12 Grimmauld Place, the Black family wards admirably contained the obliteration of a locket, all without the muggle neighbors on either side becoming the slightest bit aware of this in the middle of the night. The sole inhabitant of this dismal London residence at the time had his bitter life end while Kreacher the house elf was fast asleep in there, never knowing his beloved master Regulus Black achieved a posthumous revenge against Voldemort.

At Hogwarts during the same incredible night, three things happened at once, but with each of these triple events taking place in different parts of the massive castle. Down in the Slytherin dungeons, Severus Snape woke up in well-warranted agony for a few moments until the reminder on his left arm of the horrible crimes he'd willingly committed as a sworn Death Eater took him to his deserved fate. Elsewhere in the Room of Requirement, that magical zone which could effortlessly become whatever those outside this Hogwarts room desired had no problem suppressing the damage caused by one of its many items hidden in there exploding.

Finally, in the Gryffindor boys' dorm, a messy-haired student lying in his bed went from his normal restful slumber into petrified unconsciousness as the lone accidental remnant of what had once been an intimidating wizard desperately fought to remain alive inside this young man's mind. The fierce struggle between Voldemort's last horcrux and Harry Potter's personality went on without pause or mercy until…Harry won.

How? Since the son of Lily and James Potter never remembered anything of exactly what transpired that night, there was also no way Harry could ever know as to the why of his survival. Nevertheless, a black cloud bearing upon the surface of this haze a silently-screaming mask of Voldemort now oozed out from the lightning scar on Harry's forehead. Hanging in the air above the limp boy stretched in his bed, this cloud then totally dissipated from existence. Frowning for a moment in his sleep, Harry's face then relaxed, and he rejoined his housemates in their own slumbers who hadn't been disturbed at all by the final battle of the second wizarding war.

(At the same time in the Department of Mysteries, a small orb placed in the Hall of Prophecy then recited its recorded contents which included the words "…the power he knows not…" to the empty room before crumbling into nothingness.)

The next morning, Harry woke up feeling in the best mood of his entire life. Considering how much grief he'd ordinarily gone through in his past, Harry wasn't about to wonder why he was so cheerful now, so he got out of bed, dressed, and went down to breakfast at the Great Hall. Harry's good spirits were further lifted by the early editions of the wizarding newspaper known as the Daily Prophet arriving at Hogwarts which luridly announced the momentous events of the past night. It didn't stop there either, what with how Draco Malfoy and a number of other Slytherins were missing from their house table. Along with a certain greasy git…

Harry Potter went through the rest of his school years at Hogwarts having a perfectly wonderful time. Voldemort was gone as in gone to the grave, with all the pressures of being the Boy-Who-Lived forever off him now. So was Snape (the other houses celebrated for days until Headmistress McGonagall stopped it), along with Draco who'd been hurriedly taken away by his mother to Europe and enrolled at Durmstrang Institute in Scandinavia. Making it even better was that Peter Pettigrew's body had been found by the Aurors halfway to Scotland, which proved for once and all that Sirius Black was blameless of his accused crimes.

After his godfather was cleared by the Wizengamot, Harry moved into a new home with him later that summer. Both were ecstatic over this turn of events, with Harry grateful for never having to stay with the Dursleys ever again and Sirius occasionally letting loose a maniac cackle about a maternal portrait's destruction along with the rest of the Black house at Grimmauld Place. The only irritant in their at present happy lives was how Dumbledore continued to insist for some reason that Harry needed to move back to Number 4 Privet Drive and prepare for a final confrontation with You-Know-Who. Nothing specific was given as grounds for this by the former Headmaster as to why either should be done, just that it was for the 'greater good.'

Finally getting fed up together with this long-whiskered pariah, Sirius and Harry introduced to the wizarding world the novel concept of a restraining order, and that at length took care of the old coot packed off into a retirement home and eventual decrepitude there. Harry contentedly boarded the Hogwarts Express for his seventh year at the castle. A few weeks into the term, this young man was strolling without a care down one of the stone corridors until a very familiar annoyance to all students past and present at the school announced himself to Harry:

"YAH! YAH! YAH! Potty is a big loo! Potty, Potty, Potty!"

"Hello, Peeves," amiably answered Harry to the poltergeist sticking his head out of the wall to the wizard's right. Stopping in his tracks, Harry cautiously eyed this spirit busily excavating both nostrils at the same time. In the next instant, a quick dodge by Harry had him escape being splattered by Peeves' oversized boogers flicked at the human.

Giving a disappointed snarl, Peeves next turned this sound into a loud raspberry blast aimed at Harry, "Brrrrrrraaaaappppp!"

Right after this, the poltergeist ducked back into the wall. Taking a few steps further on while remaining fully alert, Harry eventually relaxed on his way to classes when nothing else happened. Soon forgetting his encounter with the unpleasant ghost, Harry Potter resumed his peaceful life which had been forever changed years ago when a piece of parchment from the Goblet of Fire had been mischievously set ablaze by the savior of the British wizarding world, none other than Peeves the poltergeist.

If this same troublemaking spirit had ever learned of just how he'd saved them all, Peeves' only reaction to his accomplishment would be an even bigger "BRRRRRAAAAAPPPPP!" directed to magical society at large.

Author's Note: I seriously doubt that I'm the first ever to come up with this scenario, but after doing a quick Google search, I couldn't find any other Harry Potter fanfiction story which used the same set-up. That encouraged me to write this little bit of crack and put it here for you to read my story. If you know about some other author's use of similar circumstances, drop me a line in the review section regarding this!