Chapter 280: Stacking the Odds

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20 November 1994, Rome, Italy

Harry smirked as he sent another round of stinging hexes at his three victims, or maybe it would have been better to call them his students, while they were defending against four of the beasts that he had animated. He found that stinging hexes and curses were painful enough to motivate them to not get hit, without really injuring any of them. It did help that he had jailbroken the spells to be able to modify the power output, so he could use them as a normal attack spell.

To be perfectly honest, this was sort of entertaining, not to mention mentally straining for Harry. In a real-world scenario, if he fought a group of wizards, he would not animate magical creatures while casting spells. There were thousands of better ways to fight. Still, the goal wasn't to defeat them but to train them and simulate what they would face in the second task.

However, this was a good exercise for Harry. Animating four constructs while casting spells whose paths were warped to simulate being attacked by different teams of mages was a feat of multitasking that very few people could manage, and it was entertaining.

He had stolen the animation charm from Lupin the previous year. It was surprisingly insightful as far as animation charms went. The animated creatures could be as fast as Harry himself could think, and they could be combined with a faint reflective rune shield to simulate magical resistance… Sure, Harry had modified it a bit to include some of the creatures' instincts in the animation, and cast a few spells to simulate their attacks…

It wasn't a perfect simulation of the magical creatures, but it was good enough to train the Hogwarts starting champions. Honestly, they were a sorry lot. Diggory was alright, magically at least, but had this whole knight in shining armour ideal that forced him to make stupid decisions. He kept overcommitting to attacks to prevent his teammates from getting hurt, even if they could have handled it themselves. Johnson took too many risks, and Chang rarely committed to an attack fully and had a tendency to overthink things.

If he had a full summer with them, Harry could have turned them into a great team. But at the moment, they were just competent. What Harry had done was make sure that they wouldn't embarrass themselves or really be surprised during the task. He had taught them spells specifically made to alter the environment and tutored them on the weaknesses of each creature they would end up fighting, not that they knew that these were the same creatures.

Seeing that they had gotten the gist of the exercise and that it was getting late enough, Harry decided to let them get to bed with a win. He actively made sure to weaken his animated creatures and slow them down. Ten minutes later, the four beasts were gone and each of the animated mannequins that simulated the human opponents had been taken out.

Honestly, Harry didn't want to burst their bubble, so he let them have their confidence. He gave them a faint smirk, "Well done. I believe you should have a nice break. After all, you have a big day ahead of you tomorrow."

"We have this in the bag," Johnson exclaimed.

Harry suppressed the urge to roll his eyes and thankfully Diggory made is so that he didn't really need to make a comment, "Thanks for the help, Potter."

"Don't worry about it," he just replied.

"Out of curiosity," the Hufflepuff continued, "how the hell can you cast spells that curve in the air the way they do?"

Of course, Harry wasn't going to tell him that he was warping the fabric of space to modify his spell's trajectory so instead, he said, "Trade secret, I'm afraid."

"Fine, I know when to stop digging," Diggory retorted before turning and joining his fellow champions outside of the arena.

When they all left, Harry spoke up loudly, "You can come out now."

Lily Evans removed her invisibility charm with a snicker, "Very impressive detection skills, and an even more impressive use of multitasking."

"What do you think?"

"About the brats? You did some good work with them, I'll admit that, but they're a far cry from a winning team…"

Harry scoffed, "I never expected them to win, especially since Hogwarts will most likely be targeted for winning the previous task."

"And whose fault is that?"

"Maybe it's mine, but I think I more than made up for it with my tutoring. I thought that with the teams being announced without me as a champion they would have laid off on Hogwarts."

The redhead snorted, "Yes, but as per the task rules, McGonagall could choose anyone to join the task if the team gets one of the keys. The other competitors will want to take them out before then, just so that they can't ask you to join."

Harry hummed. McGonagall had publicly stated that he wasn't going to enter the task. The news was met with a mixture of scepticism and cautious elation, even if it was 'leaked' to the press by one of the task organizers…

Apparently, the ICW organizers were pretty desperate to stop him from steamrolling the event, hoping that it would have some credibility. From what Harry could discern, McGonagall, while knowing that Harry had no intention on competing, still leveraged his lack of participation for a hefty donation to the school and a contract for the ICW to give them funding for a proper research centre in the castle and to provide the school with competent academics in case she needed to replace any professors.

The last Potter would have been lying if he said that he wasn't impressed. McGonagall seemed to want to actually improve the school and enhance the curriculum a bit. Apparently, she liked the extra electives in Beauxbatons and wanted to introduce a few of them in Britain. It was ambitious, to say the least, but it was something that the castle needed after decades of stagnation and even regression because of Dumbledore's administration.

Still, considering the issue at hand, "Do you think it will be enough?"

The fake Unspeakable replied, "Look if it was just fighting a few beasts or a team of mages, I'd say they had a chance at winning. But, no matter how much time you had to train them, they wouldn't have fared well against six teams of mages and seven magical creatures, who are most likely going to directly go after them. You taught them enough to hide and try to use whatever tools they had but the sad truth is that the odds are definitely not in their favour. They never would have been, even if you had more time."

"I don't need them to win. I need them to hold on for long enough for the plan to work… Speaking of which, have you wrapped up your side of the preparations?"

"Come on," the woman retorted while fluttering her eyelashes at him in a way that could be interpreted as innocent, but that Harry found disturbing on a grown woman's face, "would I ever disappoint you?"

She pouted and rolled her eyes before continuing, "Fine. Everything is in order. To be honest, I didn't expect you to ask this of all things."

"Desperate times call for desperate measures. What about the magic release detectors?"

Lily looked hesitant at his request before nodding, "I put them in place. We should be able to triangulate any large magical release in the area. Do you think it's a good idea to mess with whatever ritual Dumbledore is performing?"

"It could be dangerous and I'm not messing with it. I'm just trying to understand what it is. You can't tell me that whatever Dumbledore has planned, especially something of this scale, would be easy to handle. Plus, Isabella Zabini is the more pressing issue now. We still have five other tasks to figure out what Dumbledore's angle is."

"You could have just killed the bitch and been done with it," the older witch commented with a dry tone as if she didn't care if her son murdered someone.

It was moments like these that Harry could tell just how distorted Lily's worldview was. No mother would ever suggest killing the mother of her son's friend, even if that person was a serial killer who had threatened to kill one of his friends. And there were a lot of ways to deal with the woman. Ways far more subtle and which, more importantly, did not require him to commit murder.

He knew that she meant well, in her own weird way. For example, the fact that she put a bounty on him during the first task was effective in getting people to actively seek him out, instead of him hunting them. It was wrong, but it was efficient.

Harry did have that tendency… To make plans that were logically correct, but that weren't morally right… Meeting Lily was like meeting an extreme version of himself, and that had been a wake-up call as to where the path Harry was taking could lead.

Deciding not to condone the murder of Isabella Zabini, "I don't think Blaise would think kindly of me making him an orphan. Of course, that's besides the fact that the Italian ministry would take custody of him, probably bring him back to Rome, and maybe even force him to spread the Zabini crest. The sad truth is that Blaise is protected by his mother until he reaches his majority."

"Spoilsport," Lily retorted. The redhead had been incensed when she heard about the Black Widow's ultimatum, and Harry had to calm her down to stop her from burning her powerbase to the ground, "Wait a minute, you're confident. Oh, you figured out what her angle was, huh?"

"Yes, and I have taken measures to counter that. Whatever happens, she will not come out of this as a winner. In fact, she will lose quite a bit."

"And do you think that abiding by her deal but making her lose will stop her from killing that Tracy girl?"

Harry snorted, "Of course not… Not if her plan just doesn't pan out. Unfortunately, she held a knife to my friend's throat, hoping to manipulate me. It's only right that I do the same to her… I think she'll respect the terms then."

"It's always plans within plans with you, Harry. You're overcomplicating a very simple problem… You're trying to be smart, that's your problem, and you're expecting everything around you to be the same. You enjoy the chase, making your opponents bewildered as you defeat them, utterly and completely… You love the thrill it gives you."

The last Potter suppressed the urge to shudder at her accurate description. Lily continued, "It's all so nice and pretty until one day, you meet someone who doesn't care about pretty plans and schemes. One day, you'll get something wrong, and all your plans will just fall apart. And if you're really unlucky, you'll lose something precious, something that you can never get back. It's what happened to me, after all. I tried to be clever. And I was so, so clever. I tried to use a war for my benefit, for my freedom. I manipulated James, I manipulated everyone around me, really. And when I ended up faced with an entire army, with you in danger, I was lost. I did something dangerous and very reckless. I didn't expect Sirius to act so rashly, I didn't expect many things. And it cost me you…"

"I'm still here," Harry tried to console her.

"You are, but you know as much as I do that it's not enough. I lost the opportunity to raise you, to settle down and be free together. I lost over a decade of time with you, the most important decade, and when you needed me the most, I wasn't there. I won't say that I would have been the perfect mother, but I can't help but wonder what would have happened if I hadn't tried to be clever if I had just taken the fight to them and not schemed to be in the eye of the storm, safe and sound. But that's my regret, my greatest mistake, and I sincerely hope that you won't end up the same way as well."

The redhead turned and walked away before giving him one last look, "Think about what I said. I might not have had the privilege of raising you, Harry, but I hope that I can, at least, help you avoid the mistakes I made in my life. Good luck tomorrow, and I hope everything goes well."

And just like that, she left the arena, and Harry was alone with his thoughts. Needless to say, he did not sleep well that night.

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AN: So the second task will start in the next chapter and I'm kinda excited to have one without Harry competing. I know this chapter was kinda dry but it'll be very important later. As usual please let me know what you think and if you have any suggestions.

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If you want to support me check out my patréon at https://www.patréon.com/athassprkr

I tend to upload drafts of early chapters on there to get people's opinions of them so you can read up to 20 chapters ahead as a bonus.

Thank you guys for your support in these hard times.