Harry Potter:Diamond Heart.

Harry hit the ground hard, bouncing across it, almost losing his grip on the handle of the cup.

The cup is a portkey?

It saved him from having to go all the way back through the maze. Fleur would be helped even quicker. He smiled, abandoned the cup, and pushed himself to his feet to find Madam Pomfrey.

A thin, grey mist curled around his feet, not unlike the patronus spell he had failed to cast, it hung around and over rows of what were clearly tombstones.

This is not Hogwarts.

His stomach plummeted and he immediately tried to apparate away, but nothing happened.

Every year.

He turned around very slowly, realising that the mist was curling around him from behind.

A bright, cheerful looking witch, with curly brown hair smiled at him. There was a very large cauldron behind her, steaming. 'Hiya Harry,' she chattered, 'nice of you to join us.'

'Do I know you?' Harry asked politely, turning his forearm to hide his wand for when he slid it into his palm.

It wasn't there.

'Oh no, Harry, you don't know me,' she giggled, 'nobody really knows me. I'm just the talkative, cheerful witch who listens. My name is Bertha Jorkins.'

'You worked for Crouch,' Harry remembered, his eyes searching every thin spot in the mist nearby for his wand.

'Sorry, Harry,' she smiled, waving the thin piece of ebony in the air. Thick, black ropes leapt from his wand, wrapping about him painfully tightly and pinning him to the nearest headstone. 'For the briefest moment I hoped I was wrong,' he remarked dryly.

'You weren't,' she laughed. 'You see, when I left Hogwarts I wasn't good enough to get where I wanted to go, and I didn't even want that much. Nobody noticed me in the war, though I helped Barty Crouch by keeping an eye on a few suspicious members of the ministry and was responsible for the capture of more than one Death Eater, but not one person ever thanked me for it. I learnt then that knowing secrets and using them for other people's good gains you nothing, not even gratitude. I kept making friends even when things calmed down, I've always been good with people, someone who listens can be invaluable and I learned all sorts of things. One day I came across something very interesting indeed. My oh-so-perfect, principled, head of department Barty Crouch, had snuck his son from Azkaban. I meant to blackmail him, but I needed proof, so I went looking.'

'That was a bad idea,' Harry cut in.

'For you, yes,' she giggled. 'Barty Crouch Junior was not what I was expecting. He was nothing like his father like I expected, instead I found a young wizard driven to madness by Azkaban and the Imperius Curse of his own parent. In the few moments of lucidity he gained he would tell me about his master, the one who recognised his value when his father and the world deemed him worthless.'

'You believed him?'

'Not to begin with,' she admitted, 'the Dark Lord was supposed to be dead, but then, his servant came and found us.'

'He was still alive,' Harry gasped with mock horror, very subtly trying to escape his bindings. They seemed looser than they should be, the more he wanted to escape, the easier it seemed to be to move.

'He was,' Bertha tittered. 'He showed me that I was not so useless with magic as I had come to believe. He taught me that I was simply thinking about things the wrong way. I could always listen to people, get them to trust me, to talk to me, to do what I want. I never guessed I would have such a talent with the Imperius Curse, one that even the Dark Lord respects.'

'He taught you a spell, so you fight for him?' Harry momentarily stopped struggling in shock. It was such a small thing. He'd taught Neville several spells.

'He respected me for the one thing I know I am good at, and that is why I follow him, because nobody else ever did that for me!' 'He's lying to you,' Harry told her sadly. He had no hope of convincing her, she was too lost, like Quirrell, blinded by Voldemort's lies and promises.

'You aren't going to convince me, Harry,' she responded, amused. 'I've come too far to turn back even if I wanted to, and I don't.'

'What have you done?' Harry asked, 'I assume the disappearance of Crouch was you?'

'Yes,' Bertha smirked, 'he was too suspicious, when I vanished and Barty died free of the curse, he began to connect things other people couldn't. I waited as long as possible to make it appear an unrelated event, but he had to die the moment Pettigrew went missing. I assumed, mistakenly in the end, that he had captured Pettigrew, or, if someone else had, Crouch might learn enough to stop us. It took so much planning to get you here, Harry,' she laughed. 'We spent hours devising a plan just to get your name in the goblet. So many complex pieces of magic, all ineffective. Ludo and I struggled terribly. Of course, it hardly helped that I had to keep him under the Imperius the whole time.'

Bagman, Harry realised.

He'd left Fleur somewhere Ludo Bagman could easily reach her, then he remembered the Withering Curse and sighed in relief. If Bagman, or anyone else, even tried to hurt for the next few hours they would die in a most unpleasant manner. The idea cheered up him somewhat.

'So how did you do it?' The first of the ropes fell to the floor behind the tombstone.

'We never put it in,' she laughed. 'Bagman was a surprisingly useful tool, he confunded the goblet before it arrived, knowing that Amos Diggory would never let his son pass up the chance to enter. It selected Diggory believing he was the only applicant under the name of a fourth school, but to everyone watching he appeared a believable Hogwarts champion who nobody ever suspected or checked. When the name of the real champion came out, we used a simple switching spell to replace the parchment with one bearing your name. Nobody was expecting a fourth name, so nobody was watching the goblet and the spell went undetected as we hoped. Dumbledore took the goblet and spent hours checking for irregularities, but your selection as Hogwarts champion was genuine as far as the goblet knew.'

Harry admired the simplicity of the plot for a few moments, before easing himself out of the second rope. He really needed his wand, and Bertha wasn't paying too much attention while she was monologuing.

It really is quite cliché of her. 'And now we come to what we're really doing here waiting for you.'

'We?' Harry asked. He could only see Bertha Jorkins and really hoped that her company was just an imperiused Ludo Bagman.

'We,' a new voice answered. It wasn't Ludo Bagman. Harry recognised the sibilant whisper of Voldemort's shade all too well.

'Hello, Voldemort,' Harry greeted, as politely as he'd greeted Bertha. It was best not to enrage him when Harry couldn't see him and had no idea where he was.

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For some other reason this novel will only be published 3 times a week

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