//------------------------------//
// Ch. 27 — The Triwizard Champion! 
// Story: The Triwizard Pony 
// by tkepner 
//------------------------------//




Ch. 27 — The Triwizard Champion!




 

Harry slammed into the ground even harder than he had before, his two passengers tumbling over and away from him, the Cup bouncing and rolling across the grass. The fresh smell of crushed grass filled his nostrils. For a moment he revelled in the fact that he wasn’t in that graveyard. Then, he wondered, just where was he?

A sudden flood of sound left him dazed and deafened. People were yelling, footsteps pounded around him, and someone, many someones, were screaming incoherently. He twisted to the side, his wand held up and at the ready.

Albus Dumbledore was staring in horror at Harry’s passengers. “Peter Pettigrew?” he said incredulously. His own wand was now pointing at Harry’s passengers. Half-panicked, Harry looked around as he tried to understand what he was seeing around him.

Before Harry could say anything, three missiles slammed into him, screaming, “HARRY!” He went tumbling sideways, buried under a pile of frantic fillies. “Are you okay?” “Where were you?” “What happened?”

“I’m fine! I’m fine! Tired, but fine!” he tried to reassure them. His sides were itching, again. He would worry about that later. In the meantime, he struggled to his hooves and looked around, wand still held tightly in his hoof. The three girls clung to him just as tightly.

“Mr. Sparkle,” came the Headmaster’s voice. “Perhaps you could tell us what happened?”

People were standing around him and the passengers he had brought. They were pointing at the wizard and bug-thing bound in ropes and screaming at each other. “It’s Peter Pettigrew!” “I thought he was dead!” “What’s THAT!?”

He saw the Headmaster, Professor McGonagall, Professor Flitwick, several aurors, and a man wearing a lime-green bowler hat.

“He’ll need to go to the hospital wing!” someone said loudly. “He’s ill, he’s injured!”

“I’ll take Harry, Headmaster, I’ll take him —” Professor Moody said gruffly.

Girls were screaming and sobbing hysterically.

“No, I would prefer —” Dumbledore started to say.

It was complete pandemonium. No one knew what to do.

Harry pointed at his captives, still tightly bound together. “They ponynapped me!” he shouted, as loud as he could. “The Triwizard Cup took me to a graveyard where that wizard bound me to a stone and then started making a potion after putting that thing there into it. He called it master!”

Somebody close gasped. “He has the Dark Mark on his arm!” And pointed at the wizard in the ropes.

“It’s Peter Pettigrew!”

“Peter Pettigrew was a Death Eater?”

“Peter Pettigrew is a Death Eater!”

“Peter Pettigrew is a Death Eater!?”

It was impossible to tell who was speaking in the torch light.

“Where’s his hand, what happened to his hand?” Harry heard someone ask. He heard some else getting sick.

“He chopped off his own hand,” Harry explained loudly, “and said something about ‘Flesh of the servant you will revive your master.’”
 
The Headmaster lifted his wand and let off a cannon blast that brought an immediate, shocked silence. “Quiet!” he commanded. “Mr. Sparkle has returned with the Triwizard Cup, thus he is the winner.” He glanced at the two bound captives. “Plus, it appears that Peter Pettigrew did not die fighting Sirius Black thirteen years ago, as everyone had thought. And Mr. Sparkle has brought us something rather interesting.” He significantly looked over at the man with bowler hat. “The rest of this discussion shall be conducted in my office, Cornelius.”

“I’ll take Mr. Sparkle to hospital, Albus,” Mad-Eye Moody said.

“No, I think he needs to explain what happened and what he saw. Come.” The old wizard turned and started for the castle, floating Harry’s bound captives ahead of himself, confident that everyone would follow him.

Professor McGonagall stepped over to Harry and motioned that he should start moving. Professors Snape and Moody had already started to follow the Headmaster. After a moment’s hesitation, the wizard with the lime-green hat trailed after them, the aurors forming a loose escort.

Harry looked up at his herdmates and shook his head while looking up at his horn.

“Could one of you take that thing off,” he said in a disgusted tone.

After an exclamation of horror from Sweetie Belle, who realized exactly what it had to be, it took her and Scootaloo pulling together, while he and Apple Bloom pulled against them, to remove it.

The relief he felt as his horn returned to life was indescribable, even if it did tingle with the needles-and-pins sensations like his legs did when he sat wrong and one of them fell asleep. It certainly took his attention from his itchy sides! He was still shaking and shivering, though. He rubbed at the base of his horn with his front hooves. “Make sure you keep that safe,” he muttered to Sweetie Belle. She nodded and dropped the horn-ring into one of her pockets. That was one item he was going to make sure was well hidden in his trunk when he returned to his room.

Professor McGonagall watched, frowning, impatient, with her hands on her hips.


۸-_-۸


The Headmaster’s office should have been crowded with so many people, but it didn’t appear like it. Madam Pomfrey had grumbled and complained about the situation, but had cleaned and magically sealed Peter’s stump, so he was no longer bleeding, before she left to attend to the other champions who, apparently, had suffered some injuries in the remarkably short time they had had before he reached the Cup.

The . . . creature . . . bound to Peter had been ignored by all parties. Except for someone to add another stunning spell.

Dumbledore settled himself behind his desk. Professor McGonagall chose to sit to one side of the Headmaster’s desk, while both Snape and Moody flanked her. The wizard with the lime-green bowler, Cornelius, sat in front of the desk, shifting and twisting uncomfortably. Harry and the fillies sat on the other side of Dumbledore’s desk in an armchair — Harry and Sweetie Belle squeezed together while the other two sat on the chair’s arms with their hands stroking his back and neck comfortingly. Four aurors stationed themselves around the room, against the walls, and watched everyone. Peter and his companion were lying on the floor with a fifth auror standing over them.

They had barely settled themselves when the fireplace flamed up and a voice came through, one Harry recognized. “Headmaster, are you there? May I come through?” It was the Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, Amelia Bones. “Auror Stone’s patronus said something about Peter Pettigrew?”

She brought with her three more aurors. Her next words, after she came through, were, “It really is Peter Pettigrew.” She stared at the unconscious wizard for several moments, stared at his bare arm with the black tattoo on it, and then shook her head and turned her attention to the Headmaster.

“Amelia,” he said, apparently happy she had arrived. “You are just in time for Harry to tell us of his adventure!”

The colt was too frazzled to reprimand the old wizard for being familiar, again. Not to mention he was so tired it was hard to think straight.

She conjured a chair beside Cornelius, nodding her head at the man, “Minister Fudge,” she said. 

“Amelia,” he responded, nodding jerkily and staring, horrified, at Peter and his cargo.

Harry carefully and methodically recounted what he had done in the maze, and all that he had seen, heard, and done in the graveyard. He knew from what his mum had told him of her adventures that it was always important to be as precise as possible when describing what had happened. The smallest detail could matter.

He had to stop and go back several times as he remembered additional details.

There were various interruptions from different people. Professor Snape, for some reason, seemed the most sceptical, and seemed to want to dismiss most of what he said as exaggerations. Director Bones was the most neutral. His account of dumping a clod of dirt with bugs and sundry in it into the cauldron before finiting the entire mess left them startled, and they stared at the bug-thing bound to Peter.

“Scrimgeour,” Amelia ordered. “See if you can backtrack the portkey to the graveyard. If not, see if the Department of Magical Catastrophes has anything on their instruments. We need to preserve the crime scene and keep the muggles from finding it.”

One of the aurors, who looked rather like a lion with his tawny, shoulder-length hair, nodded and hurried out the door.

“It seems,” Headmaster Dumbledore said, “in view of Peter Pettigrew’s presence, that the stories of Sirius Black’s crimes and guilt thereof are . . .” he paused, eyes twinkling, “. . . in serious question.”

“Nonsense,” blustered the wizard Madam Bones had called Minister Fudge. “There must be some mistake! Poly-juice or a transfiguration! Peter Pettigrew is dead!”

Bones raised an eyebrow in disbelief. “Poly-juice requires a live subject for it to work, so anyone poly-juiced as someone else means that that someone else has to be alive. Therefore, if this wizard is poly-juiced as Peter Pettigrew, then Peter Pettigrew must be alive!” 

The man with the bowler hat screwed up his expression as if he were about to throw a childish wobbly.

“As for transfiguration,” Director Bones continued, “we can easily check that with veritaserum, can’t we? Shacklebolt?” She turned and looked at the big black-skinned wizard.

The auror nodded and looked to the Headmaster. “May I,” he asked, gesturing at the floo.

“We will have a vial in just a few moments,” she explained.

“Excuse me,” Professor Snape said quietly, “But I have a small vial in my private cabinet that we can use. It will take only a few moments for an elf to retrieve it.”

Director Bones stared at him. Shacklebolt waited to see if he still needed to go.

Snape shrugged. “I brew it to keep in practice with the more difficult potions. I am a Master Potioneer, after all,” he half-sneered.

She stared a moment longer, then nodded. “Yes, please.”

Shacklebolt returned to his former place by the prisoner. He pulled out his wand. In a few quick motions he had vanished the ropes and separated the two prisoners. A metal chair was conjured and Peter placed in it, securely tied in place with chains. 

Meanwhile, Professor Snape had summoned a Hogwarts house-elf, given him directions, and then waited as the elf disappeared.

Professor Moody, apparently, still did not trust the helpless thing on the floor. He couldn’t seem to take his eyes off it. His expression was impossible to read.

The house-elf quickly returned and handed the vial to Snape. He took off the stopper and delicately sniffed. He nodded in satisfaction and handed the open vial to Shacklebolt, who looked at his boss. “Three drops?” At her nod, he waved his wand at the prisoner, whose mouth opened wide is response. The auror carefully decanted three drops of a clear liquid from the vial onto the bound man’s tongue. Then he handed the vial back to Professor Snape and cast an enervate on the wizard chained to the chair.

Peter jerked awake, but his eyes were dull and he gave no further reaction to the people in the room.

“What is your name?”

“Peter Pettigrew,” he said in a dull monotone that made Harry shudder. He felt his herdmates echo his reaction.

Dumbledore leaned forward intently and interrupted Shacklebolt, who frowned but made no effort to stop him. “Are you the Peter Pettigrew who attended Hogwarts and claimed James Potter, Sirius Black, and Remus Lupin as friends?”

“Yes.”

He stared at the prisoner closely. “Are you a Death Eater?”

“Yes.”

Dumbledore sighed softly and straightened. “When did you become a Death Eater?”

“My seventh year at Hogwarts.”

Dumbledore and McGonagall both winced.

“Who was the secret keeper for the Potters?” the old wizard continued.

“I was.” The aurors exchanged looks of surprise.

“Not Sirius Black?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“He was the obvious choice, Sirius said. He and James decided that I would be a better choice because the Death Eaters would never believe I had been chosen. He would play the part of a decoy, and they would lose Death Eaters trying to capture him.”

“Who caused the explosion when you and Sirius met after that Halloween?”

“I did.”

“What did you do?”

“I had two days to plan. When I saw Siri, I accused him of betraying the Potters, fired a blasting curse into the gas-main cover to cause an explosion, cut off one of my fingers, and escaped into the sewer as a rat in the confusion.”

“A rat?” Dumbledore looked at the others in the room, eyes twinkling. “Explain.”

“I am an unregistered animagus rat.”

“So, Sirius did not cause the explosion that killed thirteen muggles that day?” He raised his eyebrows.

“No.”

“And Sirius Black did not betray the Potters’ secret to Voldemort”

Minister Fudge squeaked while everyone else winced.

“No.”

“You betrayed the Potters to Voldemort, and killed the thirteen muggles?” Dumbledore said accusingly.

“Yes.”

Dumbledore sighed heavily. “I think we’ve heard enough, for the moment.” He looked over at the minister for a moment, who was gaping at Peter. The Headmaster sighed again and stroked his beard. “Well, Cornelius, this will be quite the feather in your cap when the public hears how you’ve corrected a terrible travesty of justice against an old, rich, and powerful family!” he said seriously.

Fudge’s head snapped around to look at the Headmaster so fast Harry was amazed he didn’t hurt himself. 

“It isn’t your fault, Cornelius, that the previous administration, and Barty Crouch, failed to follow the law,” the Headmaster continued as he spoke to the Minister of Magic. “They threw an innocent man into Azkaban, not you. They are the ones at fault. They are the ones who did not check his wand to see if the last spell was a blasting curse or a shield charm.” He raised his eyebrows at the Minister.

“The public will have nothing but praise for the minister who discovered that a wizard had been sent to prison without a trial. And then acted swiftly when he finally found the evidence that would prove the wizard innocent and set him free!”

He chuckled. “It takes great mental fortitude and moral fiber, nowadays, to stand for the truth,” he said contemplatively. “For a Ministry official to admit that a grievous mistake had been made takes only the strongest of character, and is almost unheard of. To do so against war heroes, even more so. People will appreciate a minister courageous enough to stand up for what is right instead of vanishing the evidence and pretending nothing happened.” He smiled congenially at the wizard. ‘I imagine the wizards and witches of fair England would be very vocal in their appreciation. They probably would insist that such a strong minister remain in office for the foreseeable future.”

After a moment’s stunned silence, Fudge slowly straightened. He didn’t notice how several of the other people in the room rolled their eyes at what the Headmaster had said. 

“Why, yes,” the minister said, “They will, won’t they?” Harry could almost see the scheming that was the focus of the man’s attention — how he could turn this . . . this disaster to his advantage.

“And the gratitude of the Head of a powerful family, such as the Blacks, is nothing to be dismissed lightly, either,” Dumbledore added musingly. “I’m told the only family with deeper pockets than the Malfoys are the Blacks.”

Harry’s sides had finally stopped itching. In fact, he couldn’t really feel where Sweetie Belle was pressed up against him nor the side of the chair. He dismissed it off as due to his tiredness. It was becoming harder and harder to stay awake and keep his focus.

“You should immediately revoke the Kiss-on-sight order before there is a tragedy,” Amelia said, shrewdly. “Just imagine what people would say about you if he was Kissed after it had been proven he was innocent, and then they discovered you had dillydallied along and failed to issue a timely dismissal of the order.” She raised her eyebrows suggestively.

The minister nodded slowly, lost in thought. Abruptly, the minister’s eyes grew wide, and he glanced around the room as what had just been said, registered. “Y-yes, of course, Amelia. P-pass the word immediately to your aurors and the others. I’ll have the order on your desk first thing in the morning!”

Director Bones stood. “We’d better get Mr. Pettigrew back to the ministry for a complete interview,” she said looking at Shacklebolt. The auror nodded, re-stunned the wizard, dismissed the chains and chair, and started floating him to the door. “I’ll side-along the prisoner to headquarters and get things prepared,” the wizard said.

She nodded, and motioned two of the aurors to go with him. This was one prisoner that she didn’t want rescued or killed before she could drain him dry. 

It would be a long night for the Department of Magical Law Enforcement.

“And what is this?” She looked at the Headmaster as she waved her hand at the insect-like thing on the floor.

Dumbledore stared at it for a long moment, then said, “Alas, it is a failed attempt by Peter to forge a fake Voldemort, a convincing golem,” he glanced at the Minister, “in a pitiful attempt to make himself a puppet-master behind the façade of a feared Voldemort. An ingenious ploy that would easily have fooled the public, and most of Voldemort’s followers, if it had not been foiled by a contaminated potion.” He looked back up at her. “I’ll take care of it for you,” he said, “You have enough problems without frightening the public with rumours that Voldemort has tried to come back.”

She nodded slowly, then waved the remaining aurors to accompany her as she headed out the door.

Minister Fudge suddenly pushed himself to his feet. “I need to get back to my office,” he declared. “I need to take control of the situation before it gets out of hand! I need to prepare a press release, too. I must get the word out that Peter Pettigrew planned to pretend to bring back . . . Lord You-Know-Who.” He turned to Dumbledore. “May I use your floo?”

“Certainly, Cornelius.” Dumbledore nodded his head graciously.

Moments later, he was gone, followed by three of the aurors.

Only the professors, the Headmaster, Harry, and the fillies were left.

“It has been a long and tiring evening for you, Harry,” Dumbledore looked at Harry and the fillies. I think it is time for you to head back to your rooms. And it is rather late.” His eyes twinkled and he had a faint smile.

Harry had to agree, he could barely keep his eyes open. He nodded and shifted his forelegs, preparing to jump down.

Professor Moody still seemed distrustful of the bug-thing on the floor. He stepped closer and pulled his wand. “I’ll dispose of this for you, Albus.”

“No need,” the Headmaster said, using his own wand to move the creature to his desktop. “I’d like to study it for short while, first.”

For a brief moment, Harry thought he saw a bit of anger cross the other wizard’s face.

Mad-Eye grumbled, looked around the room suspiciously, but finally put his wand away. He suddenly twitched. His single normal eye suddenly widened in shock and he grabbed for his hip-flask. He started to unscrew it, but Harry could see a faint tremble in his hands.

He was just tilting the flask up to take a drink when it a red spell hit him and he collapsed bonelessly to the floor, the flask falling beside him. A green liquid spattered out.

Harry, and everyone else, stared at Professor Snape, who was staring impassively at the man on the floor.

“Severus!” Dumbledore reprimanded as Professor McGonagall said, “Professor Snape!” in a shocked tone. Then something began to happen to the wizard on the floor.

Except for startled and horrified gasps, they watched in silence as the wizard’s face began to change. One by one, the scars melted away, leaving his skin smooth and unmarked. The disfigured nose straightened and became whole, then it started to shorten. His long mane of grizzled grey hair shrank into his scalp and turned the light colour of straw. Abruptly, the wooden leg fell away with a loud clump as a normal leg regrew in its place. The magical eyeball popped out of the man’s face in the next moment as a real eye replaced it. The magical eye rolled across the floor and continued to swivel in every direction.

“He drinks from his flask every hour, without fail, even during dinner,” Snape said quietly while this was happeneing. “And someone has been stealing Boomslang skin and Lacewing flies from my stores.” He looked up at the Headmaster. “And the ghosts, verified by the elves, tell me there are traces of Poly-juice potion in the pipes.” With a negligent wave of his wand, the flask on the floor flew to his hand. He waved his hand gently over the open flask and towards his nose. He took a delicate sniff. He nodded and placed the flask on the desk as he said, “Poly-juice.”

Lying before them was a pale-skined, slightly freckled wizard with a mop of fair hair. 

“Crouch!” Snape said firmly, “Barty Crouch, Junior!”

“Good heavens,” said Professor McGonagall, appalled.

“Oh, dear,” said Dumbledore, blinking and stroking his beard.

Without a further word, Professor Snape took the small glass bottle of completely clear liquid out of his pocket and held it to Dumbledore.

Dumbledore looked at it a moment, frowning. Then he looked up at Professor McGonagall. “Minerva, would you floo call Amelia? Tell her we have a very important prisoner for her. One she will want to see, herself.”

He turned to Professor Snape, “Perhaps an investigation of Ala . . . Barty’s room is in order.” He looked back the man on the floor. “He has to be somewhere close for Barty to have easy access to for . . . supplies.”

Professor Snape nodded, and swept out of the room wordlessly.

“Amelia will be here as quickly as they can notify her,” McGonagall said, straightening from the floo.

Harry stared at the wizard and shook his head to try to clear his thoughts. Only a wizard could be too stupid to notice a close friend had been replaced by an imposter — for ten months! Unless the imposter had been preternaturally skilled at his deception. Only Changelings were that skilled. Or, perhaps, Dumbledore had exaggerated how close they had been?

But in any event, what could cause such dedication to duty in a human?

Harry’s eyes narrowed. Had he been the one to put Harry’s name in the Goblet of Fire?

The Headmaster looked over at the Equestrians and smiled gently. “As I said, I think it is time for you to return to your rooms.”

Harry cleared his throat and concentrated on what he wanted to say. “I think not, Headmaster,” he said, after a brief pause, in the officious tone Blueblood had taught him. “This wizard, if not the one who did it, may lead us to the wizard who put my name in the Goblet of Fire last October. As a Prince of Equestria, I believe I have a vested interest in hearing with my own ears what he has to say.”

The old wizard stared at him for a long moment before slowly nodding in agreement.

Harry murmured, “Thank you,” nodded his head, and leaned back into the chair. He just hoped he could stay awake long enough.

The wait seemed interminable to Harry — he felt himself almost nod off several times. Finally, though, the floo whooshed, and Department Head Bones stepped into the room. She swept the ash from her clothes as she looked around, only to make a double-take when she saw their new captive bound to a chair.

“Barty Crouch, Junior?” she said incredulously. “But he’s dead!” She frowned heavily, and her eyes narrowed. “Or so we were told.”

Dumbledore chuckled. “Yes, it seems we have a bad case of the dead coming back to life, tonight, don’t we?”

The door opened and Professor Snape returned. “Mr. Moody was in the imposter’s rooms, in his trunk. He had been stunned. He no doubt has been kept under control of the imperius curse. He is very weak. Madam Pomfrey is tending to him.”

Amelia took in the hip-flask, wooden leg, wand, and magical eye on Dumbledore’s desk beside the stunned creature. She sighed. ‘Mad-Eye?”

The Headmaster nodded.

She glanced at the Equestrians and raised an eyebrow.

“Harry believes, as I do, that Barty holds the secret to why and how his name was in the Goblet of Fire.”

She nodded in understanding.

“Veritaserum?” she said, looking at the vial beside Mad-Eye’s things.

“We were waiting for your presence,” he said pleasantly.

After verifying Barty’s identity, they heard how he had escaped Azkaban poly-juiced as his dying mother, who had visited him. They heard the tale of how his father had kept him prisoner under the imperius, Bertha Jorkins’ accidental discovery of him, and her subsequent memory damage by Crouch, Senior. Then came his temporary escape at the Quidditch match the previous summer, his recapture by his father, and the arrival of his Master to save him.

He insisted that it was truly Voldemort who had freed him, and not Wormtail, as he called the wizard Pettigrew. And then he explained the whole plot of the Triwizard Tournament.

“My Master wanted to know, definitively, that Harry Potter was dead. If the boy was alive, he had to be found. Otherwise the story that a mere babe had defeated him would forever be a millstone around his neck. The Goblet of Fire is a powerful magical device. If the boy was alive, the Goblet would find him, my Master reasoned. If he was still alive, the Goblet would destroy his magic and perhaps kill him when he didn’t make an appearance at the first Task. If it didn’t kill him, it would allow my master to find and kill him at his leisure.

“Wormtail snuck into Hogwarts over the summer, and accessed the old medical records for both the mudblood whore, Lily, and her blood-traitor husband, James Potter. The rat told us the school keeps such records for all students who are injured in Hogwarts. Only a child of the two could match both samples on the parchment.

“But when the boy appeared, my Master decided on a much better plan. He would use the boy to aide in his resurrection. That would forever discredit the boy, and make people forget what had happened in Godric’s Hollow thirteen years ago — a far better outcome.”

Harry was horrified to hear all that had happened. It was a plot that would have made Sombra proud. And it had gone on for at least ten months, if not a year, without a problem, except Crouch, Senior’s, escape. But a late night sleeping charm, a selective obliviate with an overpowered confundus, and that problem was quickly resolved with none the wiser, Barty told them.

Barty Crouch, Junior, had been a masterful actor, even doing things that were contrary to his master’s ideals as long as they were things that Mad-Eye, plausibly, would have done. Harry found himself admiring the man’s loyalty, if not his morals.

Amelia slowly stood, went to the floo, and demanded three aurors to come through. Turning back to Dumbledore, she said, “I’ll side-along Barty to the Ministry,” she said as they came through behind her. She sighed tiredly. “I don’t think I’ll get much sleep the next two days.”

She floated the newly-stunned Death Eater out the door, preceded and followed by aurors.

Harry took a deep breath and slowly cleared his throat, again. “I think we are done here,” he said to his herdmates, and swayed slightly. Scootaloo and Apple Bloom nodded and slipped off the arms of the chair to stand beside it. Harry swayed again as Scootaloo moved off the chair. He slowly slid off the chair and unsteadily stood on his rear legs, almost falling. For some reason, the room’s lights were getting dimmer. He dropped down to all fours. It was going to be a long walk to the dorm. “By your leave, Headmaster,” he tiredly said, slurring his words. The old wizard was still staring at the bug-like thing on his desk.

“Um?” said the old wizard, and he looked up at them. “Oh, yes, of course.” He nodded and waved at the door.

Harry stared at him. “What will you do with this . . . Dark Lord?” He waved his hoof vaguely at the thing on the desk.

The Headmaster looked back, eyes twinkling. “I do believe that a trip through something called the Veil of Death might be a fitting end. Voldemort had always said he had taken steps to ensure he was immortal, that Death could not take him. So, we will take him to Death, instead. And I will have plenty of time to undo whatever he has done, so that he cannot seduce others into summoning him back. 

“It is even possible that his passing through the Veil will destroy what he has done, as the thing they are supposed to anchor disappears.” He nodded and resumed studying the creature.

Harry nodded. Not that he understood exactly what the old wizard was talking about, but it sounded like he had a firm plan.

He turned and took a step for the door, before his left rear leg suddenly buckled. He teetered for a moment on three legs, then they, too, collapsed underneath him, and sent him to the floor. He lay there for a moment, puzzled. For some reason, his legs didn’t want to work, anymore. He couldn’t feel his hooves . . . he couldn’t feel his legs! Several ponies were shouting in the distance, but the words were all muzzy and impossible to understand. Then everything went black.


۸- ̫ -۸