AN: Hi everyone thanks for all the support, we've hit 100 POWERSTONES so the BONUS chapter will be released very soon!
Harry found Blake in the library on a Tuesday evening.
"Something happened," Harry said, breathless.
He told the story quickly - Barty Crouch Sr appearing out of the Forbidden Forest while Harry and Krum had been walking, raving, barely coherent, rambling about Voldemort and something he needed to warn Dumbledore about, and then Krum getting Stunned before anyone could stop it, and Crouch disappearing into the trees, and Dumbledore arriving and the whole thing being shut down and contained before it had properly started.
Blake listened to the whole thing without interrupting.
"Wait a second," he asked. "Think carefully, Harry - did he mention anything else?"
"I - I don't think so," Harry replied. "Like what?"
"Maybe - maybe something about his son?"
Harry's eyes widened comically, as if they were in a movie.
"Wait - yeah, he did!" he said, almost shouting. "How did you know?"
"He mentioned his son and Voldemort?" Blake said, urging his friend to be quiet. "Specifically?"
"Yeah," Harry said. "Kept saying he had to warn Dumbledore. That it was his fault. That he had to make it right." He looked at Blake. "You know something about that."
It wasn't a question.
"Bartemius Crouch Jr was convicted as a Death Eater when he was about eighteen," Blake said. "Trial was public, sentence was Azkaban for life, and he died there pretty quickly too. His mother died not long after, from what I read. Crouch Sr disowned him publicly, made a whole speech about it." He paused.
Harry stared at him. "You think - you think he survived? You think he's involved in all of this?"
"I think Crouch appearing in the forest in the middle of the Triwizard Tournament, raving about his son and Voldemort and needing to warn Dumbledore, is not a coincidence," Blake said.
"But it seems way too unlikely that Crouch Jr escaped - how could he? But if he did…"
Harry was silent for a while, before he spoke.
"Crouch Sr said 'it was all his fault', What if… what if he somehow freed his son? Helped him escape?"
Blake and Harry were both silent again.
"I think … it's a long shot. But if it's true - whatever Crouch Jr did after Azkaban is probably very directly relevant to what's happening right now."
Harry looked at him for a long moment. "Moody was nearby," he said. "Said that Snape told him that something had happened."
Blake said nothing.
"You don't believe him," Harry said.
"I believe Moody was there," Blake said carefully. "But what if the imposter pretending to be Moody is him - Barty Crouch Jr?"
Harry ran a hand through his hair. "We need to go to Dumbledore."
Blake was quiet for a second, which Harry noticed immediately.
"You don't want to?" Harry guessed. "But-"
"No," Blake said. "I agree - let's go to Dumbledore." Harry looked surprised.
"I wasn't expecting that."
Blake looked at him steadily. "We need to win here, and we probably can't without him."
Harry was quiet for a moment. "Okay."
"There's something else though," Blake said with a sigh. "Something I've been sitting on for a while, and I think Dumbledore will agree."
Harry waited.
"There's an argument," Blake said, choosing the words carefully, "that Voldemort coming back now - with us knowing it's coming, knowing roughly how and when and through what mechanism - is less bad than Voldemort coming back in a year, or two years, when we have none of that. When he's had more time to prepare and we haven't."
Harry stared at him for a long moment.
"You're talking about letting it happen," he said incredulously.
"I'm talking about not wasting the position we're in," Blake said. "There's a difference."
He looked at him directly.
"He's coming back, Harry. Whether it's now or next year or in a decade or even 50 years from now. You know that as well as I do."
Harry was quiet for what felt like a long time, staring at the table between them.
"What if I want to go to Dumbledore and actually try to stop it?" Harry said finally. "Tonight. Right now."
"I don't think that's the right call," Blake said honestly. "But I won't ask or force you to risk your life for it. I'm not-" Blake held his tongue.
I'm not Dumbledore, is what he wanted to say.
"I'm not that heartless."
Another silence.
"Let's go to Dumbledore," Harry said. "And I'll decide what I want when we're in the room with him."
"Fair enough," Blake said, as they both stood up.
/
Dumbledore's office was warm and lit, and Fawkes looked at them both from his perch with the particular expression of a very old creature that has seen a great many things and is not especially surprised by any of them.
"Harry, Blake," he said warmly. "To what do I owe the pleasure?"
"Professor, there's something we wanted to run by you," Blake began seriously. "It's a long story. Do you have a minute?"
Seeing the looks on their faces, the Headmaster grew solemn too, as he gestured for them to take their seats, as he himself sat behind his desk.
"Go on, my boy."
Surprisingly, for once, Dumbledore listened without interruption. The Headmaster sat with his hands folded and his eyes notably less twinkly than usual, listening to all of it from start to finish without a single interruption.
Blake laid it out. Moody from the beginning of the year - the eye in class, the paper on the dorm floor, the cheek twitch during their private conversation, Neville turning up right on time for a meeting that produced the Gillyweed that had kept Harry breathing underwater for an hour. The Accio suggestion for the dragon task. The pattern of every task having a solution that traced back through Moody, delivered with enough distance that you could explain any one away individually but not all of them together.
Harry explained again what had happened in the forest. Crouch Senior raving, incoherent, trying to warn Dumbledore about his son, about Voldemort, about something he'd done. Krum Stunned in the dark. Crouch disappeared before anyone could get a clear account of what he'd actually been saying.
Blake added Crouch Jr - the conviction, the rumours, the implication.
When they finished, Dumbledore was quiet for a moment, looking at neither of them specifically, looking at something past them. Slowly, he opened his mouth to speak.
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