Protection: The Sword and the Shield

The Third Cup

...Office of the Headmaster, Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry

Headmaster Lord Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore

had a plan. It was the type of plan that the headmaster preferred to make. It was complex with multiple, interconnected goals that are convolutedly dependent on each other as well as various, nearly impossible to predict, decisions made by people who have no idea that their choices may be the difference between success and failure. As usual in such cases, the "puppet master" was immensely satisfied with his own "genius" at being able to craft the "Rube Goldberg Machine" of plans and was supremely confident in its inevitable success.

The first stage of his latest gordian knot had already been completed with the successful planning of the Triwizard Tournament and the baiting of one of the Dark Lord's followers to use an obscure ritual to bring his master back. A ritual that would require the blood of Harry Potter. At the same time as setting the stage for what Dumbledore planned to be the first of three confrontations between Harry Potter and the Dark Lord Voldemort, the Triwizard tournament was shining a positive light on him.

It was a slow boil but the public's interest in the competition was growing as they sought to extend the celebration from the World Cup victory. That light would allow him to re-establish himself as the infallible leader of the light. His personal reputation was already re-awakening with his most recent magical discoveries, his political power was growing under the guidance of his son in the Wizengamot and he would be the lead judge and administrator for the coming tournament. A position that historically was held by the highest noble in the land.

The last point was, counterintuitively, the most important. At least to Albus' mind. He knew that in politics, the truth and facts were many times the least important detail when it came to power and control. He was a Lord and Headmaster of the premier magical school and a genius in the fields of potions and alchemy, but all of those things paled next to what the public's perception of him was. So, while his positions and awards was the justification, it meant nothing unless the public saw him as the true Lord of Hogwarts.

With his power restored and the inevitable trauma from the, likely painful, defeat at the hands of the re-awakened dark lord, he would be able to remove the "bad" influences from the "chosen one" so that he could train him for the coming fight but would really instill in him the need to make the proper sacrifice when the time came. It would all come together at the end of the year when the world would see a defeated Harry Potter, an arisen Dark Lord and him, standing like a beacon of light in the coming darkness.

He was supremely confident that he could save Harry Potter before the dark lord killed him after the ritual, counting on Tom's desire to show his greatness. Harry Potter would be bloodied but alive until Voldemort could kill him in front of his followers, Albus was sure. The timing still had to be perfect though because Harry Potter needed to stay in the hands of Voldemort long enough to receive enough crucios to break his defiant spirit. That would be coupled with the killing of his six fiancés by a "death eater" that had defeated the vaunted Potter wards.

The second defeat would come a year later and Dumbledore was already setting events in motion where that defeat would come at the cost of Sirius Black and Minerva McGonagall's lives. Albus was sure the two were his main opponents in getting control of his boy-who-lived and with their deaths, Harry would lose his last bit of hope and be ready for the final confrontation where he would go to join his lost love ones. Then Albus would kill a newly mortal dark lord and claim his rightful position as Lord and Commander of the Wizarding World.

Still submerged in his belief (read delusions), the headmaster rose from the chair in his office with all the imagined regality of Merlin and "glided" through his castle to take his seat in the second of his throne-like chairs. He sat in his seat of power and anticipated the beginning of the next stage of his plan. The road to greatness began with the Triwizard tournament but the grandness of the tournament would be pointless if no one knew about it or, more importantly, associated that grandness with him.