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(Enchanting Melodies) Chapter 459: Birth of a Legend
🕑 Added 2025-04-20 14:00:03 +0000 UTCChapter 459: Birth of a Legend
21 June 1995, Hogwarts
Cornelius Fudge watched with bated breath as the final Spanish champion was eliminated by Susan Bones. The girl was the last of Hogwarts’ competitors and was doing a pretty good job at handling herself using her weird rune magic. Cornelius was never an expert on these matters, choosing to concentrate on foreign policies and economic reforms rather than obscure forms of magic, but he didn’t doubt that it looked impressive.
Nevertheless, the task was almost over, and hopefully with it, a lot of his political and economic troubles. He didn’t even care if Hogwarts won. To be fair, it would have actually been better for international relations if they lost, to avoid any potential allegations of cheating, not that there were.
A lot had been riding on this tournament. It was the final stipulation from the ICW to finally retreat from their aggressive influence in magical British politics, as well as a revitalisation of international trade. He had even heard a few rumours about partnerships in Hogsmeade and more than a few potential new branches of shops on the continent opening there, hoping to cater specifically to Hogwarts’ students. It would have been preferable to happen in London, but Cornelius would gladly take what he could get.
There were also a few stipulations about safety in Britain, but he was handling it on this front. On the Lycan front, Saul Croaker, the head of the department of mysteries, had made contact and they were open to negotiations to become citizens of magical Britain officially, and the Unspeakables had also confirmed that Lycans couldn’t infect anyone or have any children, so it wouldn’t be that hard to sell to the Wizengamot in exchange of peace. Apparently, their leader, this Red Witch, had perished. Cornelius didn’t have all of the details, but he didn’t care; that was one problem dealt with.
The only issue was the Dark Lord, but Dumbledore had promised that he’d take care of it, in exchange for some political support later. He was likely vying for his former position as Chief Warlock, and Cornelius was inclined to give it to him. Having such a powerful figure back would bring a lot of stability to their country, and they could finally start to recover.
But it all started with this cursed tournament ending on a good note.
McGonagall did a good job of making it entertaining without any dangers. What happened in Olympus was still on people’s minds, and they obviously appreciated the transparency during the task. It was also short, sweet, and with high stakes. Dumbledore’s act with Ascalon was beyond genius. He got the ball rolling, and Fudge capitulated on him. The former headmaster was obviously doing a good job handling everything.
And yet, Cornelius was nervous. He’d been traumatised by everything always going wrong with any attempt he had to help his country’s economy, and he was waiting for the shoe to drop. The truth was that he was tired. The previous couple of years alone were hellish. Everything that could have gone wrong went wrong in ways that he never expected. Dumbledore trying to kill a child, a fake Grindelwald proclaiming his return, Azkaban’s destruction, a new prison needing to be built, vampire attacks in the Quidditch World Cup, a fucking civil war against the Lycan’s, You-Know-Who’s return, the ICW taking over, and the massacre of half of the Wizengamot. Seriously? And that was just the highlights.
The truth was that he was tired, and if something went wrong again, Cornelius would retire. He had barely managed to wrestle control from the ICW after the mess in Olympus, leveraging the death of a student to do so, something that he genuinely felt bad about doing. It wasn’t worth it, not anymore.
But as the task progressed and almost ended, he could almost feel everything going well. As if it wanted to prove him wrong, just as his thought ended, the entire sky started to burn.
Everyone froze, including the Champions who had stopped fighting, and just looked up as they saw streaks of Light and Darkness swallowing everything around them, dancing like some sort of play. He could hear the world tremble with what seemed like sounds of thunder or explosions, which reverberated in an obvious magical way. The castle shook once, subtly, like it had taken a deep breath and was now holding it. Even the ghosts fell silent.
And just like that, everyone was looking at Fudge, who started sweating. He knew that it was too good to be true, but he had a crisis to handle, his final crisis, most likely. He righted himself and turned towards Bones, who was staying with him in the top box, alongside a lot of the ICW representatives and the judges, “Are we under attack?”
That had to be the main priority. By Merlin, he hoped that they weren’t, but he wasn’t optimistic. Nevertheless, the head of the DMLE didn’t have time to answer anything, as one of the ICW representatives, Heinrich Eberstadt, spoke up loudly, “We knew that Britain was unsafe, but not that we would be attacked in the middle of an international event. Again. You made your reassurances, Fudge, and there will be reparations for this.”
Merlin, Cornelius really hated that man, who was literally likely being attacked, but focused on gaining some sort of political leverage. It didn’t matter that the ICW was the one that provided most of the security details, enforced by Dumbledore himself, and that they used this access to get free rein over the castle, despite McGonagall’s obvious resentment of it.
Thankfully, the Bones Matriarch interjected, having received a small ball of light, a way that Aurors used to communicate with one another quickly, “I just got a message from one of my Aurors. There isn’t an attack. What’s happening isn’t even in Britain.”
“With all due respect, Madam Bones, the sheer amount of magic needed to make such an effect would be incalculable.”
“And yet, it is true,” another ICW representative said, a French man whose name Cornelius forgot. He was holding a piece of parchment, where words seemed to appear on, “I just received an emergency message from France. It seems that they are seeing and feeling the exact same thing. This isn’t something unique to Britain. We are not under attack, but a magical event of this magnitude is still worrying.”
Oh, thank Merlin. For once, it wasn’t his responsibility to deal with. Cornelius would have kissed the man if he could. He just took the time to slump in relief and saw that Amelia Bones, for all her composure, also relaxed slightly. She must have been worried about her niece being caught in some sort of attack.
And now, it was time to be on the offensive, and so Fudge put on his most severe voice and spoke up, “Can anyone track it down? We need to know where it is so that we’d be able to investigate it first.”
One of the judges, a Spanish wizard, waved his wand in some complicated patterns, casting a spell that Cornelius had never seen before, muttering incantations in some foreign language, before releasing it with a flick. A large illusion of a map of Europe appeared in thin air, which started to narrow towards the general location of the magical anomaly.
It seemed to be somewhere in Austria, if he wasn’t mistaken. It was final proof that this had nothing to do with Britain, and yet, the ICW representatives seemed to stiffen and pale in fear. A few even trembled slightly. Bones jumped at the opportunity, “What is this? You obviously know something.”
Eberstadt, who had previously been completely steely, spoke up with hesitation, “We cannot know for sure if it is involved, but this general area is very close to a certain magical entity.”
“And what is it?” Bones asked, not relenting.
“Nurmengard. Whatever is happening is likely centred around Nurmengard.”
That struck the entire room speechless, and whatever comfort the minister felt evaporated completely. This was where Gellert Grindelwald was being held, the man who had brought Europe to his knees, the man whose duel with Dumbledore was that of legends, the monster whose war still had scars to this day.
Fudge spoke up first and asked, “Where is Albus Dumbledore?”
They all turned to where the former headmaster’s seat was supposed to be and saw it empty. Now that he thought about it, Cornelius hadn’t seen him since the task began. An uncomfortable murmuring spread around the room. They had probably realised the same thing. Bones turned towards the Spanish Judge who had found the source of the magical effect, “Can you tell us anything about what’s happening there?”
The old man shook his head, “My dear, I have mastered many divination spells. What I did was search for surges in magic, which is easy, but that much energy would scramble any form of clairvoyance and scrying. See?”
He waved his wand in another pattern, letting a ball of mist appear, only to freeze completely as a veritable battlefield took place in front of them, very clearly. “How is this possible?” another judge asked.
The Spanish judge replied, “I do not know.”
Cornelius didn’t care what they said next, looking completely transfixed by the battle before him. Albus Dumbledore, with white wings on his back and some sort of glowing spear, was battling a gigantic black Dragon of energy that turned into some sort of demon, until finally, it fell, and the sky started to right itself slightly.
It was a duel unlike anything Cornelius had ever seen before. It was more like two gods battling themselves than an actual fight between mages, but it was the reveal of the Demon thing being Grindelwald that shocked them all. No one had said anything in this time. No one gave any orders or did anything. After all, what else could they do against beings like them?
There was an irony to it that someone as powerful as one of the gods battling had sat in front of him in meetings, and acted like a kindly old man. The dichotomy of it just made him breathless. No wonder people feared them. No wonder the ICW had done their best to appease him and had backed off Britain in fear of him.
Nevertheless, everything looked to be going well. Good had triumphed over Evil. Dumbledore was victorious, but then they started to talk, and everything came apart.
Genocide?
The End of Days?
Dooming humanity?
What, in Merlin’s name, was going on?
Cornelius barely caught half of their conversation, and his skin got paler and paler as things went on. It was ironic. Dumbledore wasn’t their saviour. He wasn’t their hero. If anything, what he was fighting for was just as horrible as Grindelwald's. He also wished to destroy the world and rebuild it to what he thought it would be. He had admitted to committing atrocities for his dream, for his illusion of a utopia, that they worked together to build the ritual that made all of this worth it in the first place. The only issue was that they seemed to want to use it differently, trying to achieve different visions of the magical world, which led to this conflict.
He had never entertained the idea that Dumbledore would ever work with a Dark Lord, especially the one that he had defeated in the first place. And yet he was, freely admitting it, as if nothing happened.
They were watching a battle that would define the fate of their world, and yet both choices were as bad as one another. No matter the winner, they would be enslaved to their designs, taken from their homes, their world destroyed by their machinations.
He didn’t want to believe it. He barely even wanted to acknowledge it. But this wasn’t some political nightmare that he could just stall for as long as he could. This wasn’t some foreign influence interfering in his affairs. This was power. Pure and unrestrained power, and there was nothing he could do about it.
No one said anything in this room. What good would it do? What could it change? There was nothing any of them could possibly do. The battle was halfway across the continent, and if they could intervene, what could they have done?
He hoped that something would come and save them at the last minute.
And then, it happened. Someone intervened.
A scythe appeared from thin air and skewered Grindelwald in the chest, revealing Harry Potter, and this time, the wound wasn’t healing. Harry Potter was the boy who had come out of nowhere in the last few years, yet everyone still remembered. He caused more than a few headaches for Fudge and the ministry, but he’d planned to use him as their new deterrent, their new ‘Albus Dumbledore’, after his impressive display in the school tournament. It was a pretty long-term plan, though. He had planned on offering the boy some perks politically, helping him, and only start making moves after he graduated, if he was still in office, of course.
Then, the boy disappeared for a few months in Durmstrang, his reappearance was surprisingly not that big of a deal given that it happened soon after the mess in Olympus, which was already preoccupying everyone’s minds. In the meantime, Fudge had to deal with the political instability of half of the Wizengamot being dead or in hiding, and a bloody civil war. He didn’t put much thought into the skilled boy.
And yet, here he was, saving them all, having defeated Grindelwald, and easily trouncing Dumbledore, who was kneeling down trying to save the Dark Lord, like one would an old friend, not someone he wanted to kill. The boy cleared up a lot of things, but he got his own share of questions.
And Cornelius had no idea what any of it meant.
He heard the words being said—prophecy, the Light, the Dark, something about multiversal breaches and some ancient devourer—but it all blurred together in his head, half-remembered myths and stories he'd dismissed as the kind of nonsense Unspeakables wrote about when they drank too much.
What truly mattered was gold, politics, and the reality in front of them, not dreams and stories. Not old legends that would have been in a book by Beetle the Bard, not history books.
And yet, the boy was speaking of it as fact, and a few of the ICW representatives did gasp a few times at the revelations, especially about the Light and Dark being destroyed.
The boy’s voice wasn’t loud. It wasn’t angry. But it cut through the noise, through the silence, through everything.
And what he said… it ended Albus Dumbledore.
It wasn’t just an accusation. It was a condemnation. Not of his power, but of his purpose. Of everything he had stood for, every legacy he had built. He hadn’t just made a mistake. He had nearly destroyed the world, and worse, he thought he was saving it.
Harry Potter stripped him bare, called him out for what he was, not with fury, but with clarity. The kind of truth that didn’t need to be shouted to be believed. He didn’t just defeat the most powerful wizard of the age. He dismantled him and revealed that he’d been the one who arranged for the scrying to not be overwhelmed by the magic, that the world would remember him as the man he was.
Heinrich Eberstadt, the ICW representative, broke the silence, his words shaky, “The public cannot know.”
The Spanish judge shook his head, “It’s too late for that. Anyone with a fragment of skill in scrying or divination would be able to see what we saw, even in the future. I have no doubt that half the world’s magical government is watching this with us. You cannot stop it even if you wanted to.”
Whatever response was swallowed up as the boy killed Grindelwald. The man’s body cracked, like glass, slowly moving all over the body, with some golden light seeping through it. And just like that, there was an insane release of energy that destabilised that scrying, enough for them to actually be sent back by a mere illusion.
The entire room box was in disarray, with chairs and furniture being torn from the ground. An emergency barrier flared to life at the last moment, shielding the top box from the worst of the backlash. But it wasn’t enough to keep everything intact, papers flew, the illusion shattered completely, and half the delegation was flat on the floor, groaning in pain or stunned into silence.
Cornelius clung to the rail, coughing through the dust and magic still humming in the air. Someone muttered a quick stabilising charm, anchoring the box again. Bones barked orders for everyone to check in, and slowly, the chaos ebbed into tense silence.
“What… what just happened?” someone asked—he didn’t know who. It didn’t matter.
A thin, older man in dark green robes stood up. An expert, by the look of him, one of the ICW’s magical theorists, most likely. His voice was grave as he spoke, "Killing Grindelwald didn’t just end the fight. It destabilised the ritual… whatever it was. That amount of raw, unanchored magic… it should have vaporised the entire area. Everything around it. Dumbledore, Potter, the land itself. Gone. The fact that the backlash somehow travelled through divination is almost unheard of. I’m being very optimistic here, but a ritual of this magnitude being unravelled would have destroyed half the continent at the very least, and that’s a very conservative estimation."
That silenced them more than anything else, and someone used divination once more, and saw that there didn’t seem to be any damage, outside the area itself. Everything took a breath of relief at the thought.
“But it didn’t, did it?” Fudge said quietly, feeling his heart beating loudly at the sheer stress this was causing him.
“No,” the expert replied, shaking his head slowly. “No, it didn’t. The boy must have known what killing Grindelwald would trigger. He must’ve had a countermeasure prepared to contain the blast. It’s very unlikely that he or Dumbledore survived, especially given the… statements he made. If I had to guess, he had to be there, he had to personally perform the spell, and he knew that he would die. He just did it, just to save us all.”
Cornelius sank into his chair, staring at the space the illusion once occupied. Gone. The boy. Dumbledore. Everything.
He muttered, more to himself than anyone else, “So that’s it, then…”
“No,” Bones said, already standing tall, already composing herself. “It’s not. We’ve got an entire world to calm down.”
Eberstadt nodded grimly, wiping soot from his face. “We’ll need emergency Obliviator teams, dispatched everywhere. There will be panic in the Muggle world. We’ll blame it on a solar flare or a comet being near or something. As for the magical world, the public cannot be allowed to think the world nearly ended.”
“But we can’t hide this,” Bones added. “Not all of it. Not anymore.”
Silence.
Cornelius closed his eyes, then opened them. His voice was tired, older than it had ever sounded before. “Then we give them a name. A story. If the world needs a face to explain this… they’ll get one.”
He looked out, past the ruined box, at the trembling sky.
“Harry Potter,” he said, “will be the martyr. The one who saved us all. The boy who gave everything to stop the end. That’s what they’ll remember. Not Dumbledore. Not Grindelwald. Not the world nearly ending. Only the hero who saved it. It will keep them preoccupied, hopeful, and that’s what we need.”
No one argued.
Because deep down, they all knew it was true. They needed a symbol powerful enough to distract from the questions they couldn’t answer, from the truths they didn’t understand. Harry Potter would become the story. A legend. A shield against panic.
Eberstadt was already composing a dispatch in his head, Cornelius could see it—he was good at that, turning catastrophe into press releases.
The rest of the ICW officials slowly picked themselves up, their faces grim, solemn. They would fall in line. They always did. Especially when they had something neat and clean to package. And this… this would be perfect. A selfless boy. A sacrificial battle. A death too noble to question.
Someone would write a book. Someone would build a statue.
Cornelius didn’t care. Not anymore.
He would retire after this term. Life was too short to spend trying to deal with one mess after another. It was likely foolish. The acclaim of being home to Harry Potter, the saviour of the world, would have been more than enough to help fix Britain’s economy. He could already see the surge of tourism from other grateful magical places, maybe even rebuilding Godric’s Hollow as a tribute to him. But he was just tired.
He just watched the flickering remnants of the illusion spell fade from the air and whispered, “Goodbye, Harry Potter, and thank you. You might be gone, but the legend remains.”
AN: So, some of you said in the last couple of chapters that you wanted the magical world’s reaction to this, and this idea just came to my mind. I’m not sure it came out like I wanted it to. The essence was to show how Harry became the legend that the kids from the future talked about with so much awe. I tried to put a bit of cynicism into it, like what I’d imagine politicians acting when dealing with something like this, but I don’t know if I pulled it off. As usual, I don’t mind rewriting it depending on your feedback, so please let me know what you think and if you have any suggestions.
Comments
Krazo
Perfect, just what i needed!
Alex J
Tbh, I would have liked it more if the world had seen Harry fight. Like properly fight at full strength. But still great chapter :) tyftc
