Awesome / The Odds Were Never In My Favour

In a story aimed to take things up to eleven where the main villain is dismissive of Voldemort, there's ample opportunity for awesome.

Year 1

The Shadow of The Exchequer

• Alexandra not only starts off in the small bedroom because she used "accidental" magic to demolish the cupboard under the stairs when she was younger, but she opens her letter and confronts her aunt straight away, and magically silences her uncle’s shouting.
• Her first night at Hogwarts, Alexandra is assaulted 20-to-1 by a bunch of vengeful upperclassmen. She physically disarms the aptly named Alex Sykes, the fourth year leading them when he attempts the Reductor Curse, then uses smokescreen and body bind spells to evade death until Flitwick arrives.
  • Noticeable in that there is so much chaos and cross-fire in the Ravenclaw common-room during the fracas that despite being wounded in the altercation, the Hogwarts rumour mill ensures that Alexandra is held accountable for hospitalizing fourteen of her elder year-mates and being ridiculously powerful; even though she's not... Yet.
• In early October, fourth-year Alex Sykes brings his friends to ambush Alexandra again; she flips their ambush, beats all three, and confiscates their wands to give to her head of house in front of the whole school the following breakfast. Yes, it takes all night for her full-body-bind curses to wear off and she also ensures that they look like Morgoth's orcs with a litany of other hexes just to add insult to injury.
  • Kudos to Sykes for his power: his Bombarda Maxima leaves “a huge hole” where a door had been, and Alexandra later steals the spell for her own battles.
• Alex Sykes attacks again when everyone is fleeing the troll on Halloween. Alexandra blinds him with Lumos, has the decency to implore her attempted-murderer to run from the troll, (not that he takes the olive branch) and ends up rescuing Hermione when it pursues them into the toilets. In awesome fashion, by throwing everything and the bathroom sinks in a TK storm that knocks it into next week to fall and be Impaled with Extreme Prejudice.
  • Hermione defies Alexandra’s unpopularity to stubbornly befriend her savior, bringing Nigel Wolpert along as well.
• Early in the New Year, Alexandra single-handedly wins past the defenses of the Forbidden Corridor and leaves with a (fake) Philosopher’s Stone.
• Mid-April, Alexandra is ambushed 10-to-1 by Slytherins and Ravenclaws. She leads them on a chase to tire them out, then hexes them all unconscious and frames Gryffindor for the attack to escape blame.
• Alexandra duels Professor Devkins so Nigel can escape, slaying a vastly more experienced wizard with a Bombarda Maxima environmental-kill and surviving a curse invented by Morgana Le Fay.
  • Hermione was forced at wand-point to help Longbottom through the Forbidden Corridor. She got her revenge by trashing the Gryffindor boys’ dorms and Snape lets her off scott-free for “improving the décor”.
• The King of The Exchequer magically blocks a Killing Curse (supposedly impossible) and summarily executes Knight Alchemist for treason.

Year 2

The Blood of Slytherin

• The slaughter at Brise Roc. Knight Summoner of The Exchequer is tasked with removing all traces of Flamel's treachery. His plan is manifold. First he kills the fortresses' entire contingent of staff and cuts all outside contact with Gringotts international branches. Then he stuffs their souls into a goblin vault to conjure an eldritch demon, lures an expeditionary response force of 5,000 goblin soldiers into the underbelly of the fort and locks it down with dark wards just as its summoned. The massacre lives in Alexandra's memory forever - and we get to read what happens when Durin's Bane went up against Durin's Folk.
  • The gobs fight an invincible extra-dimensional entity that regenerates from the energy of its own dimension in perpetuity. It's a doomed battle and they fight to near the last goblin anyway.
• The Black Cobra manor family meeting, where Alexandra meets her distant Norwegian cousin, Astrid Sverre. A fellow prodigy from Durmstrang. The two ladies are the only ones to impress the dark matriarch of the Black family, Lady Cassiopeia. Leo, Neville, Draco, Percy and the Burke Squibs on the other hand? Less so...
• Alexandra and Morag take a stand against the Gryffindor's snake-hunting when the teachers don't. Defending Lyre and Astoria from Neville and his bully-boys in a two-on-many free-for-all duel. Snape is so impressed with their school spirit that he awards both girls a hundred house points apiece and attempts to take one thousand from the lions; which is sadly relegated to a mere five hundred.
• Junior Death Eater Thomson Carrow attacks Alexandra & Lockhart on the orders of the Heir of Slytherin. Alexandra blocks his Killing Curse with a table and uses the Ice Saw curse to break his shield and mangle his legs. Then summarily executes him with the sword she claimed from Brise Roc.
• "By the power of Pertho, Hagalaz, Eihwaz and Thurisaz, I beseech you, thunder of heavens! FULMEN IMPERATOR!"
• Alexandra had multiple contingencies planned out to defeat Slytherin's monster once Hermione determines it's a Basilisk. But she eventually settles on the least expensive of smuggling into the school, a giant Amazon-basin bat! ''Chaerephon gigantica'; that hunts magical snakes through echolocation alone, being completely blind unlike mundane bats renders her immune to the death / petrification glare and its talons perfect for ripping out eyeballs and levelling the playing field.
• "For Elindil!" (stabs her sword up into the basilisk’s brain under its jaw)
• Peter Pettigrew of all the Marauders takes human form and dispatches the junior Death Eater targeting her during a Mexican stand-off as the battle rounds down.
• Percy reveals that Alex's sword is none other than the Answerer, Fragarach, wielded by High King Nuada, the first monarch of the Tuatha Dé Danann. Then named Clarent, when wielded by Mordred to mortally wound King Arthur at the Battle of Camlann. The dark sister to Excalibur itself.
• In the Chamber of Secrets, Alexandra blinds Tom and his remaining cronies with a Lumos, then quickly impales Riddle, decks Scylla Yaxley, and kills William Rosier with 'Glacies Secare''. Only for the dying Riddle to reveal that he still had a second basilisk at his command.
• Alexandra can’t fight the second basilisk without Tisiphone (her pet bat) and the Chamber of Secrets is filling with water. So she launches a Bombarda at the ceiling and apparates straight up to the top of the black lake, braining the quint-X alchemical monster under tonnes of rubble.
  • Ronald Weasley in one of his most ignominious portrayals in fan-fic history is actually the one to precipitate the collapse of the Chamber of Secrets when he tries to ape Alexandra with a bombardment charm, with Charlie's broken wand. He ends up creating a DEW beam that slices through hundreds of meters of bedrock!
    • Lockhart mentions there are eight Lord and Lady level potentials in sheer power among the student body at Hogwarts. We know Alex, Ginny and Neville are on the list. Seems Ron is squandering bucket-loads of potential.
• Within hours of Riddle's defeat, Fudge, Crouch, and Bones kick Lucius Malfoy off the board of governors (although unfortunately he's then given a better job), chew out Dumbledore for his Financial Abuse of Alexandra, and take away his guardianship of Alexandra and several of his important positions.
• Grimjaw and his goblin warriors adulating Heiress Potter when she claims the second basilisk carcass in front of a race of monster hunters. He couldn't be more proud of his benefactor.

Year 3

The Wars of Future Pasts

• Defying all the “Dark Witch” accusations Alexandra receives from her contemporaries, she spends the first part of her summer looking for her kidnapped Muggle cousin, Dudley, who'd bullied and abused her all their lives. She may have the cynical excuse of gaining Dudder's gang of miscreants as muscle-headed subordinates by promising to find their leader in crime, but considering she could just walk away or terrorize them with wandless magic...
• The Exchequer sends all of Europe into panic by breaking Gellert Grindelwald free from captivity. Knight Explorer single-handedly breaches Nurmengard with Earth Elementalism (when the combined magical task-forces of the Allies in WWII preferred to lock the fortress down). While Knight Necromancer musters half-a-million Inferi to delay the German, Danish and Swedish ministries.
• During Operation Bloodbath, a press-ganged, were-rat converted Dudley of all characters gets to force wizards into retreat by savvy tactics of targeting the redoubt of Azkaban with his Panzerschreck RPG instead of them directly, after witnessing them deflect bullets and rockets with "bullshit" magic.
• Bellatrix Black murders ten Death Eaters of the inner circle, her erstwhile husband included, uses their deaths to ritually regain a semblance of her former power, then proceeds to waltz out of Azkaban, flattening several Aurors and escaping Dumbles and the Ministry reinforcements on an animated flying stone serpent that jets off faster than any commercial racing broom.
  • Three of the Calpurnius vampires try to rip her apart when she gloats how she's murdered their lord, only for her to send them into ludicrous gibs with a casual wave of her hand. No focus required.
• Dolores Umbridge unabashedly uses Bothering by the Book against Dumbledore at Alexandra’s guardianship hearing, starting on time even though Dumbledore & Sirius Black haven’t arrived, meticulously going through the candidates, and fining Dumbledore for improper conduct when he arrives after the end and tries to overrule her decision.
• Erasmus Rincewind apparently burned the city of Dresden during the war against Grindelwald and has the boldness to treat Dumbledore in his office with dry disrespect, still getting the Defense job for the year.
• If it’s possible to invert Trauma Conga Line, then chapter 49 is mostly a series of Stella Zabini proving to be reasonable, responsible, considerate to Alexandra’s circumstances, and genuinely wishing to help her new ward.
• Old Frederick, the Welsh Green dragon can talk. And he greets Alexandra as the Champion of the Morrigan before giving her a history lesson as she delivers his dinner.
• The Exchequer’s Queen annihilated Scylla Yaxley’s psyche (something Dumbledore couldn’t do) and put a few simple compulsions on Ron that devastated Dumbledore’s reputation and got him kicked out of his Grand Sorcerer post.
• On the train to Hogwarts, Alexandra kills a Dementor with Clarent. If it can kill Hellboy in the Golden Army, all of demon-kind is fair game.
• Alexandra’s animagus form is a Lernaean Hydra large enough to climb on without realizing. Her attempt to mentally fight it is humiliatingly short.
• Bellatrix Black, Britain's most wanted witch, walks into the International Confederation of Wizards’ Criminal Court to request a retrial for her charges. Due to the egregious practices of Crouch's courts, Bellatrix walks out a free woman, cleared of all charges.
  • The revelation of just how deep The Exchequer’s operations run. The judge who chews out Dumbledore and clears Bellatrix of her charges is Hélène de Broglie, aka Knight Informer.
• She may not be Cho's bosom friend, but when dementors invade the quidditch pitch and Cho falls off her broom, Alexandra saves her life, bodily slowing her fall even though the momentum and their weight drives Alexandra's Nimbus to the ground and breaks it on impact.
  • Unlike canon Harry, Cho catches the Snitch mid-fall.
• The aftermath of the prank poisoning. The Board of Governors rush to Hogwarts, chew out Dumbledore, and demand suitable punishments for the perpetrators instead of Dumbledore letting Ron and Leo get away with near-murder. They even account for Ron being under a Compulsion and go easier on him than on Leo. Yay for responsible adults!
• Stella Zabini accompanies the Board to demand a fine from Dumbledore for keeping the Potter's Invisibility Cloak for himself for more than a decade. A modest fine of 1,100 galleons per day. All three thousand nine hundred and eighty one of them! Dumbledore grows faint when he realizes he’ll owe Alexandra more than 4 million galleons, but if he fights it in court the amount could even be increased and his own Wizengamot oaths won’t let him refuse or talk his way out of it.
  • "Oh for once in your life, shut up, Dumbledore!"
• The Battle of Hogsmeade beginning in Chapter 59 when the Army of Light brings a kill-squad down on the village and a battalion of Nephilim trackers to assassinate Alexandra on her first date with Susan Bones. Big mistake.
  • Alex makes use of Teleport Spam, summoning Fragarach from her dormitory, and an emerald lightning invocation, the Gungnir Spear to slay eleven of the twenty light wizards in little under a minute.
  • They're led by a Light Champion who goes full Beam-O-War with Alex's most powerful Norse runic spell yet, Mjölnir's Call. It levels the high-street!
  • Lady Morrigan endows her Champion with the ability to control all the corvids in her vicinity as aerial support and also opens a dimension door to Pandemonium when she prays for a quick escape.
  • Knight Priest stepping in to duel the almighty assassin on Alexandra's behalf. He'd been sent personally by Isis and his backup is Grindelwald. He even compliments the young witch on her remarkable talent. Considering she's already a γ-Level Witch at thirteen... It's likely she eclipses their own power in their adolescences.
  • Fully trained β-Level mages, unbound by Ministry protocol against learning esoteric forbidden magics, are as Fred aptly puts it: "ridiculous" city-buster powerhouses, capable of manipulating the battlefield for hundreds of meters and changing local-weather patterns when they start casting.
• Alexandra Potter vs The Sword in The Stone!

Alexandra: I will not submit to the decrees of old things who have led humanity to the brink of the abyss. I will not be the puppet of an invincible sword. I may lose. My magic may fade. But I am and I will remain Alexandra Potter.

Excalibur: You make a grave mistake.

Alexandra: Free will or slavery? I don't think so. BEGONE!

• Grindelwald's rematch against Dumbledore shows precisely why, even after decades of imprisonment and stagnation, Grindelwald is one of the most feared people in Wizarding Europe - and Dumbledore still beats him, having the advantage of being free to train and gather strength in the decades since the original duel. Grindelwald still manages to get one last parting shot in before the failsafes of the Exchequer kick in and finally kill him, revealing to Albus that Ariana Dumbledore lives. The end of the chapter shows Knight Necromancer, chuckling to herself over her brother's imminent demise.
  • Just the fact that Grindelwald is able to give Dumbledore pause in his ideologies, particularly with the reveal of Ariana's survival. The Headmaster himself notes that had he not known until he confronted Ariana himself, he would likely have let her kill him.
• Lily, resurrected as an immortal Vampiri Romani, tracks down James in a French hospital, temporarily lifts his dementor-induced madness and proceeds to castigate, no, annihilate him verbally for abandoning their daughter.
• Draco Malfoy, who has been nothing but an embarrassment as a wizard and a disgrace to the aristocracy throughout his appearances, is able to conjure the balls and the charisma to be the first to "implore your [Alex's] indulgence" and request, on bended knee no less, whether she'll accompany him to the Winter Ball as his plus-one. Cedric, Fred and George do ask all their ladies before hand, so he is emulating their example but come on! It's The Heiress Alexandra 'Basilisk-Slayer' Potter. The Exiled Queen. And she accepts!
• Lyre utilising her estate's ward schema to massacre her perfidious relatives, who have kidnapped her comatose father, seek to steal her inheritance and have joined forces with the Knight Templar Light-aligned fanatics. And there was much rejoicing.
• Alexandra, with Stella's help, hatches the first Britannian Gold dragon in nine-hundred years and names him Fingolfin. We'll see if his namesake can also oppose the Overlord of Darkness with a happier ending this time.
• "Hail Hydra." Alex levitates tens of thousand of tonnes of steel from the Scapa Flow and claims the SMS Markgraf, an Imperial Germany WWI-era Dreadnought as the flagship of her fleet.
• In the first Preliminary, Alexandra summons a broom from 2 miles away to finish in three-and-a-half minutes with 99/100 points. "UP RAVENCLAW!"
• Alexandra finishes first in the Temple of Plants preliminary, using Helios's Wrath to burn a giant Devil’s Snare and even taking the time to help some competitors, scoring 99/100 again.
• In Durmstrang’s preliminaries, Lyudmila Romanov earns 100 points by terrifying a labyrinth of fire-breathing monsters into fleeing her very presence.
• Although Alex only comes fifth in the rigged potions preliminary, her first attempted brewing of an advanced OWL Ageing potion, all from memory, serves to impress Horace Slughorn enough to offer her his tutelage.
• Bloody Beltane Eve, Alexandra humiliates the Arch Mage Ra, slaughtering his White Phoenix animagus form. Bellatrix has blood-cursed Sirius to die in necrotising agony, Peter fights Remus to the death only for Morgane to show up and defeat Lupin without a care and Lily takes down James when he tries to cleanse his line of his only daughter. The Marauders fall afoul of four of the most dangerous women in the world and only Pettigrew makes it out alive.
• Lyudmilia goes on a all-night, remorseless killing spree, despite the armistice between light and dark. She slaughters a small army of The Exchequer’s were-cobra militia and their captives, (save for three Alexandra rescuees) with island-wide acid rain, the conjuring of multiple shadow demons and the ability to passively radiate an Imperio & Crucio aura. She stains the surrounding seas red with blood and skulls for her Lord, Loki.
• The Dark Queen's animagus is that of FENRIR! A beast easily capable of devouring a Lord-level mage like Odin. Which was probably what he was to gain divine stature in the hearts of the Scandinavians. Immune to every venom and capable of regenerating from any injury. Unlike Alex's Lernaean Hydra: "no hero had ever been able to claim having killed one." Fleeing is the only sane option.
• Alexandra's bravery in standing up to such a monster and escaping with her life cannot be understated.
• Since Sirius' demise and Regulus' taking back the headship of the Black household, Alexandra is able to sue Leo for defamation and slander, impress Bella at the second family meeting and become the beneficiary of the sealed Black Files. Decades of political dirt on Dumbles and his Light faction.
• In defiance of everyone’s expectations, from Dumbledore to Alexandra to the Queen of The Exchequer herself, Voldemort regains his physical body at the end of Third Year with the aid of Macnair.

Year 4

The European Magical Tournament

• There are twelve Knights of the Exchequer who are Osiris' seemingly most powerful pieces on the board. But with the reveal of Rook Imposter, a being who outclasses Mystique or Decoy Octopus in espionage... What about an order of Bishops on top?!
• Alexandra fully masters the Bayard-DeLain animagus transformation method in less than a year, becoming a nine-headed Hydra that can spit jets of lightning from three mouths and every poison known on earth from the others!
  • Chapter 80 later has Alex affirm that she can selectively choose which maws spew what and that when she first transformed properly there were nine columns of ionised plasma shooting into the sky.
• Ireland defeat Argentina in the Quidditch World Cup Semi-Finals with 550 points to 40!
• Filius Flitwick can once again tutor Alex ever since her first-year... only now they're sparring on the level of Albus and Voldemort's duel in the ministry atrium! Elemental constructs, flechette storms, mass conjurations and animations, Alexandra can even hurl fire and lightning with her off hand and tries to conduct the latter through the high-pressure water spouts he's blasting her with. She can even tank a rain of arrows and a bombardment charm to the chest thanks to going maximum armour with her Hydra scales. But her Charms Master and head of house can still trounce her raw power with experience and skill.
• He also lays out why Alexandra's survival instincts, honed from her harrowing childhood with the Durseley's when she was just a sly thief, are her real talent.

Professor Flitwick: You aren't arrogant, Miss Potter. In fact, I would say that of all the twenty students selected to participate in the Tournament, you are the one who sees with greatest clarity their strengths and weaknesses. Then you move to correct such a state of affairs.

• Susan gifting her girlfriend a secondary-foci: a glove woven of true silver, diamonds aligned to the lightning element, and the metacarpal bones of a necromancer that likely was an ancestor. It's practically a lesser Infinity Gauntlet.
• Death Eaters attack the World Cup in order to slaughter the Malfoy family for leaving the cause. Alexandra shows up within minutes to save Lyre, (plus Lucius, Draco and Narcissa by sweet happenstance), butchers two dozen of them (27 to be precise) plus a veteran Inner Circle member, and goes on to exterminate that veteran’s House (Yaxley) all in the same night.
  • George Weasley manages to warn Alex of the terrorist action by successfully casting a corporeal messanger patronus that races from Dartmoor to Cornwall, (about sixty miles) in seconds.
  • Dumbles has put the trace on and outlawed the Imperial Thunder war-spells that were Alex's signature lethal weapons. So she decides to... diversify her arsenal. "GLACIAREM DIABOLIS!" Imagine Castlevania's Sypha Belnades, when she goes nuts with the frozen stalagmites on crack cocaine.
  • Icy weapons born of Hrungnir's Curse even project an aura that screws with magical translocation; no retreat, no surrender. Befitting of dark magic invented by Nordling battle-mages.
  • Scrimgeour mentions that the spells the Malfoy family's rescuer used have metal-AF titles including The Blizzard's Lament and The Legion's Ashes.
• Oh Albus, you could have been a contender! An α-Level behemoth and Titan of Magic not seen since Merlin. But politicking and teaching for most of your life does not a warrior-mage make. Considering just how powerful he is in this and in canon despite the piled up decades of being out of practice in actual dueling... If Albus had actually kept his edge honed he would have had no superior in the world save Morgane and Osiris.
• Though they are the comparatively weaker divisions among the Exchequer. Ponder just how few and exceptional they all are when Osiris has ruled the world from the shadows for more or less since antiquity and perhaps even the dawn of mankind's history itself. And that he has tens of thousands of sleeper-agents and infiltrators all over the world.

There were twenty-four Bishops, masters of great discoveries, pursuers of impossible feats, avid for lore and recognition. Forced into the darkness and eager to take revenge for recent and ancient slights. (Lily is likely one of this regiment, being the only student talent-scouted from Hogwarts by the Dark in living memory)

There were thirty-six Rooks, young and old, wise and foolish. Many of them had sacrificed too much, too easily and found themselves unable to advance their Art and become the Dark Lords they wanted to be, instead reigning over the shadows and the beasts of his underworld.

• Alexandra coming nose-to-nose with Ra, the Archmage of Light and not blinking or backing down from the monster in innocuous human skin. He could likely destroy her with a blink but even an immortal becomes as brain-dead as Leo in her magnificent presence and he gets appropriately sued into next week for his pathetic ad hominem attack. Not to mention also for attempting to illegally scan her magical presence in a duplicitous, underhanded manner which only took Alex three seconds upon entering the DADA classroom to notice and neutralise.
• The life debt the Malfoy's have incurred from Alexandra allows for this fantastic exchange.

Narcissa Malfoy: (talking to herself) No-one could have expected that...

Alexandra Potter: No-one?

Narcissa: Heiress Potter... I wasn't... I mean, when you said, you wanted a meeting, I thought I would have to lower my wards to greet you.

Alexandra: Voldemort left holes in your wards. Any witch... or wizard... who can speak to snakes can exploit them. I took the liberty of adding a few runic traps and erasing those weaknesses after going through the crippled sections.

Narcissa: (in disbelief) I... thank you for this favour. I hope you won't mind if I hire some experts to check your work? (said experts had not found the exploits in the first place)

Alexandra: By all means. They may be able to find something I missed. I'm just beginning my studies in Ancient Runes.

Narcissa: As... important as it was for me to be informed of the weaknesses in Malfoy manor's wards, I doubt you only wanted to contact me regarding this issue.

Alexandra: No. I wanted to contact you since that problematic night during the World Cup Final, when I saved your house from extinction.

Narcissa: You- (panicking) How? You are...

Alexandra: Not old enough? Not experienced enough? Not skilled enough?

Narcissa: No... I mean... no, you evidently are, it's... I am surprised.

Alexandra: (blistering sarcasm) Evidently. Let's make things clear. I didn't save you because I have an unlimited amount of love for your House. I know you were behind the whole Chamber of Secrets debacle during my second year, and I have not forgotten. Yet no woman deserves to be raped by these... these beasts. No-one should go to a sporting event and have to be traumatised by violence and atrocities.

Narcissa: You want the Dark Lord gone.

Alexandra: I do not consider him a Dark Lord, just a murderous terrorist. But yes, I want him gone. All he brings is more chaos in an era that really doesn't need more.

Narcissa: I agree but it is not so simple. He truly came back from death.

Alexandra: No, he cheated Death of Her due, there's a difference. (serene smile) As I said nights ago, in the end, no-one escapes Death.

• Níðhǫg's mockery of Ra and Albus, his evaluation that the Avatar of Light has weakened considerably since Camlann (despite Ra's bluster and claims of still being in his prime) and his final biting reveal that Morgan Le Fay (and potentially the Evans family) are descended from Alexander the Great.
  • Nidhogg himself, being a massive, immortal black dragon, who once held enough power and prestige that his only equal was Merlin, and who was able to survive being struck by Excalibur. Alexandra herself calls him the magical equivalent of a nuke, and with the machinations of the Exchequer and the actions of Rook Imposter, he'll be free by the start of Alexandra's fifth year.
• Venice pulls out all the stops to welcome the students and foreign dignitaries. Their train station is fancier. Their medieval hill towns are timeless yet modern. The canals, gardens and architecture are divine and they have numerous extra-curricular activities and omni-disciplinary magic courses available. The Exiled are practically salivating at transferring to the Scuola Regina as soon as the seven months of trials are complete.
• Ra just can't resist a barbed comment and getting uppity whenever he sees Mordred reborn. Alexandra schools him so badly that he stares at her "like she'd killed his favourite pet right in front of him."
• In the first trial of the European Magical Tournament, Alexandra handily wins first place, levitating a sextuple-X-class juvenile Sea Serpent meant to be their opponent and using it as a weapon to kill Lorenzo de Medici, before using Fulmen Imperator Maximus, the strongest Imperial Lightning spell bar none, to almost kill Fleur Delacour and Lyudmila Romanov. Dumbledore outright states that Grindelwald couldn't cast such a powerful spell even at the height of his power, though he acknowledges that he didn't have the benefit of a lightning affinity.
  • Henri de Condé, the Champion of Horus wins the Fire Trial through cunning and strategy, unwillingly pitting Romeo Malatesti, the Champion of Ares against a vicious female Chimera via a summoned whirlwind.
  • Not to be so easily dispatched, Romeo unveils his animagus form of a giant Stymphalian Bird from the twelve labours of Heracles. Its body clad in bronze feathers that are immune to magical flame. In this form he chucks the quintuple-X class beast around like a rag-doll.
    • Anyone who remembers that particular myth will attest though that these immortal avians were shot down by the Greek demigod, with arrows dipped in the blood of the Lernaean Hydra...
• Eleonora da Riva, the Champion of Innocence is the only contestant to surmount the Trial of Air by charming the Griffin that has dispatched all her rivals with an Aria of Serenity, a steak and plenty of petting. And to put a cherry on top, he even flies her up to her tournament clue. Her point total only being penalized for time taken.
• Krum uses magic to make a broom out of rocks and flies toward his chest. He doesn't make it, but he leads the griffin in a merry chase. Likewise, Cedric nearly distracts the griffin during his search for the right chest by transfiguring nearby ropes and catwalk into birds.
• Lucretia Sforza summons elemental wind armour from the prior trial to deflect the Cockatrice's petrifying breath and conjures dozens of illusory duplicates to distract it before retrieving her clue with nothing but her Succubi heritage-endowed gymnastics.
• The Cockatrice itself is so deadly it kills two champions without hesitation and in the original canon, much the same here, one of its kind was the cause of the Tri-Wizard Tournament being disbanded because it went on a rampage that cost the lives of the champions, hundreds of wizards and witches in the audience and nearly the lives of the heads of each school!
• Although Lyudmila is soundly defeated by Alex's strategy, her own spell nearly took Death's life, failing since it struck her side-on, was underpowered and had to contend with her hydra scale armour. Before this, the Tsar's daughter freezes the naumachia arena's miniature lake surface completely over, telekinetically whips Fleur into an ice-hole, manhandles the young Leviathan with greater ease than even Alexandra, conjures an energy net large enough to pin it to the stadium wards, and animates the burnt and scuttled wreckage of one of the triremes to leave with her clue. She congratulates Death on her victory, but assures her that in the second task, first place will be hers.
• Minister Delacour gets an epic Anger Born of Worry moment after the First Task. He chews out Fleur for her ruthless and insane actions on behalf of the Light (and their effect on the rest of the family) and caps it off by slamming the door on Ra (who has been The Corruptor to his daughter) when he tries to visit Fleur's hospital bed.
• Alexandra Apparates 2,000 miles, from Venice to Hogwarts. Not even Dumbledore can Apparate that far, and the thirteen-year-old Alexandra does it in a casual, nonchalant manner.
• Hermione uses her encyclopedic knowledge and supreme logic to solve the hieroglyphic cipher clue. The wizard who likely wrote the riddles, Osiris, has over 3000 years of lore and experience to draw upon and the 14-year-old matched his wiles.
• Most of the second task.
  • Ambre displaying some super speed and defeating Eleanora, one of the last task's big winners.
  • Weak-looking and bookish replacement champion Giovanni Ruspoli shows himself to be an expert with fire spells when he conjures a bridge of fire during the first round and wins two duels to make it to the semi-finals. He also briefly catches Lyudmilla by surprise, transforming his arm into a claw and putting it around her throat. Lyudmilla ignores it and transfigures him into a pig.
  • Viktor Krum flies over a set of dangerous obstacles and then out-duels Henri.
  • Alexandra defeats Ambre with a revolutionary ice spell, not wanting to underestimate the girl that was able to beat a Light Champion.
  • Cedric beats Ruspoli to the tournament clue before they duel and puts up an "incredibly long" fight before being defeated.
  • The Champion of War transfiguring a bunch of metal into an avatar of the God Sobek and trying to make his opponent a sacrifice is more Nightmare Fuel and Moral Event Horizon material than awesomeness, but it still makes an impression. Said would-be sacrifice managing to claim the tournament clue while putting up enough of a fight so that he only loses an arm isn't anything to be ashamed of either, though.
  • Lucrezia underhandedly tosses Alexandra into the lake, who defeats the giant crocodiles bare-handed and uses her magic to hurl several of the crocodiles at her treacherous opponent.
  • Alexandra defeats Lucrezia with a dragon spell that hasn't been used since the 1940's, and the last time it was used, it took six wizards to cast it and half of them died. It's an impressive enough feat that even Karkaroff was impressed and able to give only sincere compliments.
  • Alexandra and Lyudmilla decide to duel "the traditional way", destroying the temple with the clue, then fighting each other with Champion-level weapons - Clarent and Gungnir. Lyudmilla ultimately forces Alexandra to yield.
    • Alexandra could have kept fighting, but she didn't want to reveal her Animagus form too soon.
• The Exchequer are revealed to have a Dream Walker, who can control peoples bodies unless they are a champion or some other form of defense. And apparently based on Lyudmilla's thoughts they can control up to 60,000 people at once and have those 60,000 people use magic. Both Lyudmilla and the Light are scared of the Dream Walker considering the Light tried wiping them out and Lyudmilla is more or less sent running home to find a defense.
• The third task has its own share of awesome moments.
  • Alexandra shows off her unpredictable side by revealing that she never planned on doing any potions brewing. Instead, she reveals that she had Fred, George, and the Ravenclaws prepare for the task by building three trebuchets and brewing mass amounts of certain alchemical potions, thus allowing her to easily walk through the task while having her helpers bombard the area with whatever potions she needs.
    • During the first part, she has the twins bombard the area with potions that turned everything into crystal.
    • During the second part, she has them deliver a potion that creates a perfect replica of an object made out of dragonbone, using it on a mirror so she could bypass the maze by instead going through Pandemonium.
    • During the third part, she charges through the potion walls by using two potions that make her Nigh-Invulnerable.
  • After thoroughly embarrassing the other Champions through her preparedness, she's faced with a Chinese Jade Imperial dragon and has to brew a potion to satisfy him. She shows off her status as a Dragon Tamer by brewing... cinnamon-spiced, alchemically-brewed sugar. It's so delicious that she gets past.
  • Lyudmila gets her own fair share of awesome moments as well, starting off by brewing the White Veil of the Elder Dragons, replicating one of the Elder Dragons' magic - the power to reverse manmade objects into nature, turn humans into beasts, and create magical plants and animals with their mere presence. She placates Osiris by revealing to the audience that the White Veil was created by the Elder Dragons in order to prevent Ra from murdering more of them in order to selfishly rewrite reality again.
• Neville gets a little credit for having the initiative to realize that Alexandra's strategy can help the other champions and successfully appealing for Fred and George's help.
• The Chinese Jade Imperial Dragon qualifies for being able to fight Lyudmila and keep her from reaching the Thrones showing that there are things she isn't able to brute force her way through.
• Fate also gets its first showing as just how much of a Game Breaker it is by controlling Neville and have him reach the Throne of the Day while avoiding a battle between the dragon and Lyudmila without injury.
• Osiris also demonstrates how far ahead he's thinking by setting up an instant win condition with the seals to make Fate intervene and have Ra lower his guard thinking the danger was averted.
• As acts of Mistreatment-Induced Betrayal, Eleanora and Fleur defy their Light Is Not Good leaders by joining teams led by Dark champions for the fourth task.
• Alexandra easily outsmarts others during the fourth task by preventing a majority of her forces disguises from being discovered and later follows Krum's plan to confuse the Day Court with a comedy skit to swipe the keys under their noses.
• Malatesti proves to have cunning by controlling his other Champions and managing to get Fleur to kill one of the other Light Champions and embarrassing another which activates 2 more seals.
• Alexandra curb-stomping Galahad, destroying Azkaban, shattering Excalibur, and sending the inspiration for the One Ring into a volcano in the process.
• The Muggle Prime Minister orders Fudge to turn over Galahad and Dumbledore for war crimes trials. When Fudge refuses in a high-handed manner and threateningly brandishes his wand, the Prime Minister's security detail tranq him and place him under arrest.
• Alexandra making a speech to The Unmasqued World after returning to Venice where she both relishes the potential of the Statute of Secrecy being broken but also makes sure to warn the public about serious Culture Clash risks with stuff like Muggles using blood transfusions and wizards controlling each other with blood magic.