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The Pureblood Pretense
Harriet Potter and her cousin Arcturus Black swap identities in order to attend each other's schools. Harry, going by "Rigel Black", draws the attention of Professor Snape for her potions skills, and helps to discover a cure for a mysterious sickness spreading through the school, frustrating Tom Riddle's plans to blame Dumbledore for mismanagement.
Harriet "Harry" Potter, daughter of James and Lily Potter, and her cousin (actually second cousin) Arcturus Rigel "Archie" Black, son of Sirius and the late Diana Black, are dissatisfied with the plans for their education. Harry is obsessed with brewing potions, and hero-worships Severus Snape, but is legally barred from attending Hogwarts because she isn't pure-blooded, and is instead enrolled at the American Institute of Magic. Archie has a place at Hogwarts, which his father wants him to take, but he has wanted to become a Healer ever since the death of his mother from an unidentified illness, and Hogwarts doesn't have a good Healing program, while AIM does. Archie's attempts to persuade his father to send him to America have been unsuccessful, so the children plot to switch places. Harry steals Polyjuice Potion from her father (who works as an Auror), which they use to have Harry put on the Hogwarts Express, and Archie on the plane to America.
Both settle in well initially; Archie/"Harry" tells AIM that his records said Harriet due to a prank, and becomes firm friends with Hermione Granger, who could not attend Hogwarts either. "Rigel Black" is sorted into Slytherin, as she had hoped (with the Hat promising not to divulge her secrets), and befriends Draco Malfoy and Pansy Parkinson, much to her own surprise. (In keeping with the Song of the Lioness series that partially inspired it, the story primarily follows Harry.)
Within her first week, however, Harry is partially caught out by Marcus Flint, who turns out to be an acquaintance of Archie, and knows that "Rigel" isn't him. Fortunately, Flint doesn't guess who she really is, and doesn't feel inclined to disrupt his friend's plans; he settles for making "Rigel" do his homework assignments for him. Harry is concerned about whether she can handle coursework several years in advance, but gets by with help from an unsuspecting Percy Weasley.
In classes, Harry struggles to channel her magic through a wand, but she excels in Potions and gains Professor Snape's attention as she had hoped, despite his antipathy toward the Marauders. He identifies her wand as a poor match and a possible source of her difficulties, accompanying her to buy a replacement; Ollivander immediately recognises her, but does not expose her to Professor Snape, and sells her a holly and phoenix feather wand. With a well-matched wand, Harry's class performance greatly improves, but she finds her magic being almost too cooperative, responding to subconscious desires unless she actively intervenes and directs it.
During the same time period, she begins to come under attack from an anonymous source, starting with being tripped on the stairs and breaking her wrist in the fall, later being hit or narrowly missed from behind with minor jinxes, then being saved from a poisoned drink at Halloween. It eventually turns out that the culprit is Lee Jordan, former friend of the Weasley Twins, whose family has been sidelined by the success of the Marauders' joke product line at Zonko's. Lee blames Harry's whole family for his own family's poverty, and intends to cripple her to prevent her from going into the family business. Driven to panic by his threats, Harry's wild magic defends her and knocks him out. Lee is withdrawn from Hogwarts by his family, rather than face charges.
Archie and Harry switch back to their true identities for the duration of the Christmas break, using Polyjuice Potion that he stole from an upper-year Potions class at AIM. They find that Sirius has redecorated with Slytherin colors and snake motifs in Archie's honor, which makes Harry slightly uncomfortable about their deception, but also leads to her and Archie learning that she's a Parselmouth. Archie gives her a book on Occlumency, with the aim of improving her magical control through emotional control.
After the break, Harry gains Professor Snape's permission to use a private lab for practice, and learns about consciously imbuing potions with magic, as her magic's unusual behavior makes unconscious imbuing inadequate. In contrast to the usual approach of commanding magic to obey, she finds that her magic works best when she visualises politely asking it for what she wants, cementing her belief that magic is more sapient than most wizards give it credit for.
She then has to put her new imbuing ability into practice, when a mysterious sickness spreads through the younger years, infecting students' minds and putting them into magical comas that require regular potions to keep them alive and healthy (but unconscious). It quickly becomes apparent that her magical reserves are unusually large, and Professor Snape allows her to share the brewing load, at her request, to help stave off his own magical exhaustion.
Snape's supplies of ginseng, necessary for the potions, then begin to run low, with his usual suppliers reporting that it has all been bought out by someone, and Harry overhears him talking to Professor Quirrell. The conversation reveals that the Save Our World political party (to which both Snape and Quirrell belong) has sent the sickness deliberately, to discredit Dumbledore, their major political opponent, and thus open the way for them to pass legislation that will forbid half-bloods from marrying muggle-borns. With the students now endangered by the shortage, Snape demands to know how to cure the sickness, just in case the legislation doesn't pass quickly enough, but Quirrell doesn't know how and makes no promises about whether the party leader (Tom Riddle) will cooperate.
Snape designs an alternative recipe using acai berries, and delegates all of the brewing to Harry while he goes abroad in search of more ginseng suppliers. She is able to keep up by skipping all her classes (with permission), but his search is unsuccessful — and then Draco falls sick, and turns out to be allergic to acai berries, leaving him with only three days to live. While visiting him in the hospital wing, Harry's rudimentary Occlumency skills allow her to notice the sickness beginning to enter her own mind, and she retreats into the mindscape fortress she has built around her magical core, leaving her conscious and free to act, but unable to control her own body.
Knowing that unlike her, Draco cannot afford to wait, she then extrapolates what she knows about magical cores to use her own core as a backdoor out of her own mind, giving her limited awareness of her surroundings. She then connects to Draco's core and uses it as a backdoor into his mindscape. There, she finds Draco aware, but trapped by a creeping black mass of sickness on all sides, and rallies him to repel the sickness with his magic. The two of them are able to clear a path through his mind, allowing Professor Snape (returned empty-handed from his trip) to enter via traditional Legilimency, at which point he is able to rapidly clear the remaining sickness away.
Professor Snape initially refuses to believe that it is possible to enter another wizard's mind through their core, but after Harry successfully demonstrates it, her explanation is accepted, and she assists in freeing all of the other victims. The Malfoys declare that they owe her a life debt for saving their heir, and make her an honorary member of their family. The sudden full recovery of all students boosts Dumbledore's popularity, and the marriage legislation is put on hold.
The Serpentine Subterfuge
Harry establishes a backup cover story in case the ruse is breached, planting evidence that she's living and working in the Lower Alleys, and meets the Alleys' unofficial government, the Court of the Rogue. At school, she faces a series of mysterious petrifications of students, but is able to defeat the magical diary causing them, which started as a copy of Tom Riddle's sixteen-year-old self but has gone rogue.
Over the summer holidays, Harry sets out to create a contingency plan in case the ruse is exposed: she starts a correspondence schooling course, takes a summer job supplying potions to a shop behind Knockturn Alley, and uses the proceeds to rent a cheap apartment. The aim is to create a believable cover story explaining Harry's absence from America without suggesting that she's been at Hogwarts: Archie can claim he organised with an anonymous third party to take his place at Hogwarts so that Archie could take Harry's place at AIM and study Healing. She further discovers a spell that can be used to combine two people's appearances for the purpose of Polyjuice, and devises a way to make it very long-lasting, a year or more; with this Modified Polyjuice, she and Archie have similar appearances all the time, allowing them to switch places on short notice.
Her family is making their own contingency plans. With talk going around of the revised marriage laws potentially forcing half-bloods to accept proposals from pure-bloods, they suggest a formal, but long and terminable, engagement between Harry and Archie, which both agree to, giving her legal grounds to refuse other offers.
While going about all of her preparations, Harry meets Lionel Hurst, "Leo" to his friends, who rescues her from a mugger on Knockturn Alley and starts helping her carry her potions each day. It eventually comes out that Leo is the Rogue, king of the Lower Alleys (though not recognised by the Ministry of Magic), who collects tribute from the various businesses and ensures that they are protected and their needs met. Leo finds her intriguing, and keeps his subjects from targeting her, but is facing rebellions by an outsider named Claw. After narrowly escaping from a battle between Leo's and Claw's forces, Harry approaches Remus and begins fitness and self defence training for her safety.
She also attends Draco Malfoy's birthday party, where she encounters Tom Riddle speaking with Professor Snape, and learns that he's plotting to interfere at Hogwarts again. She gives Draco, for his present, a flight potion that she created through conscious imbuing of shaped magic, without realising how revolutionary the concept is, and she saves the life of another attendee when she notices that his drink has been tampered with.
Back at school, Harry returns to her hectic schedule, including bowing to peer pressure and joining the Quidditch team as a Beater. She also starts noticing signs of strange behavior from Ginny Weasley, who has set up unusually potent mental defences, but appears to have limited experience or theoretical knowledge about them.
On Halloween, there is an explosion, and Neville Longbottom is found petrified at the scene. A few weeks later, Padma Patil is similarly attacked, and a pet snake tells Harry about the presence of the "Great One". In both cases, Harry is near the scene, and unfriendly elements in the school (such as Daphne Greengrass) begin to suspect her. She's then attacked at her private lab by someone who wants to steal from her schoolbag, but she fights them off when they struggle to make full use of their wand.
The day before students leave for Christmas break, Mr Filch's cat, along with her six kittens, is killed, and their blood is used to write a threatening message on the wall, demanding Dumbledore's removal from Hogwarts and promising further attacks each month until it happens. Harry intercepts the message and informs Professor Dumbledore, allowing it to be cleaned off before the other students see it. She also tells Professor Dumbledore and Professor Snape that she's been hearing Parseltongue before the attacks.
Over the Christmas break, Harry meets Malcolm Hurst, Leo's father, and based on the quality of potions she's been selling, he offers her an internship at the Potions Guild. Leo reveals to her that he knows about her apartment, which worries and upsets her, but he agrees not to pry further so long as she promises to come to him for help when she gets in over her head.
Harry then attends the SOW party's New Year's Eve gala, as Rigel, and overhears Riddle talking to Lucius Malfoy, learning that he does have an agent at Hogwarts, whom he trusts, but the attacks are not in accordance with his plans, and the Chamber of Secrets may be involved.
Back at school, Harry approaches Hagrid to ask about creatures that might be responsible for petrification, and learns from him about how the Chamber of Secrets was opened before. She also begins assisting Professor Snape with research into the Wolfsbane Potion, learning about additional techniques such as multilayer brewing and "indirect stirring" via wandless magic.
Lockhart organises a duelling club in January, and when he foolishly conjures a snake during a friendly duel, Harry's Parseltongue ability is revealed. Another student is then attacked, another threatening message written on the wall, and Harry is once again on the scene and blamed by other students. The Weasley Twins offer to manage public relations for her, pulling school-wide pranks that paint her in a good light.
In February, Harry learns that Hagrid's roosters have been killed, seemingly by belladonna poisoning, and that the acromantulas have moved their nest deeper into the forest; she puts the pieces together to guess that a basilisk is responsible for the attacks. Professor Dumbledore attempts to lure it out with a large amount of raw meat and a recording of Harry calling it, but to no avail, and Professor Lockhart is petrified shortly afterward.
In March, Harry's new sister is born, and she's able to visit (as Rigel) for the birth. Another student is then petrified, this time from Ravenclaw, and Harry herself has a close call when trapped in the corridors and hearing the basilisk active, meeting Moaning Myrtle in the process, but is found safe.
In America, one of Leo's subordinates checks on "Harry", surprised to find a boy, but Archie is able to persuade him that he was being pranked when told to expect a girl. Harry is upset with Leo for prying, and insists that he respect her privacy; he doesn't like to leave her in danger without trying to help, but agrees, and makes her apartment look lived-in as an apology.
Harry's control of her magic also shows problems, as dangerous situations increasingly result in her unintentionally casting a very dangerous shield that disintegrates anything it touches. She and Professor Snape are especially concerned about the fact that she had no idea of the shield's existence until after she had already used it several times. She greatly offends Draco when she inadvertently uses it during a harmless Defence exercise where he was supposed to shield her, giving him the impression that she doesn't have any faith in his abilities.
Moaning Myrtle brings Harry word of the Diary being flushed down her toilet, and Pansy goes to retrieve it, but is petrified in the bathroom. Ginny, possessed by the Diary, then ambushes Harry and abducts her to the Chamber of Secrets.
Ginny reveals that the magical construct from the Diary was created by sixteen-year-old Riddle as a snapshot of his mind at the time, to guard against his core self ever becoming complacent, and that the construct is displeased with Riddle's lack of violent revolution. The Diary-construct kills the basilisk, then attempts to possess "Rigel" and use her magic and social status (with the added prestige of killing the basilisk) to bring about dramatic change. However, Harry retreats into her mindscape, jumps to Ginny's mind through her core, and frees Ginny from her mental cage, cutting the construct off from its source of magic and allowing Ginny to run for help. The construct attempts to fight back by possessing the basilisk corpse, intending to knock Harry unconscious and then possess her when she can't fight back, but Harry destroys its brain, ending the possession, and then stabs herself with a venomous fang so that her body will not be available. The construct flees in search of a new host, and Fawkes arrives in time to heal Harry.
In the aftermath, the marriage laws are pushed back again. Harry arranges for the basilisk's organs and scales to be partially sold and partially donated to research. The construct, meanwhile, secretly takes up residence in a snake from the Forbidden Forest, plotting revenge and revolution.
The Ambiguous Artifice
Harry's magic grows beyond her ability to control, forcing her to wear enchanted jewellery to suppress most of her power. Peter Pettigrew then comes to teach at Hogwarts, having stolen the Dominion Jewel, which is twisting him into a greedy conqueror while empowering him to control creatures' minds. After practising on the creatures in the Forbidden Forest, he kidnaps Harry and attempts to steal her magic, but it overwhelms him, causing the Jewel to devour him for his failure and take up residence inside Harry's mind (against her will).
Over the summer, Harry begins her internship at the Potions Guild in her own name, refining and publishing her "shaped imbuing" technique, which allows a spell to be embedded in a potion for greater endurance and simplicity of use. Professor Snape hears about it and is skeptical, but impressed by her results. Around the same time, he publishes the results of his experimentation on Wolfsbane Potion (with Rigel's help), producing a recipe that more effectively suppresses the wolf, reducing the pain and injury of transformation and requiring only a single dose per month.
Harry also attends Draco's birthday party, where she returns the (now inert) Diary to Tom Riddle, learning about how he created it and that he fears what the construct will do if it survived. Her present to Draco is a "Potentialis Potion" intended to reveal magical aptitudes. Afterward, during her usual potions brewing for the Serpent's Storeroom, she is commissioned by Mr Malfoy to brew magic suppressing and nutrient potions that she deduces are for Draco, though she cannot guess why he needs them.
On Harry's thirteenth birthday, her magical core matures, with severe repercussions, giving her a level of magic beyond her control. After talking with her mother and learning about Lily's own history of poor control, Harry commissions a power-suppressing ring that stabilises her magic enough to cast spells, but reputable sources agree that such suppression is dangerous in the long term.
With the aid of the New Wolfsbane Potion, Remus Lupin begins teaching Defence at Hogwarts, while Peter Pettigrew takes Care of Magical Creatures. Having applied for more electives than the usual schedule can fit, including one-on-one Alchemy lessons with Professor Dumbledore, Harry is granted a Time Turner that can travel back up to a week, giving her a complicated schedule, but she appreciates the opportunity to get more done and still have time for self-care and friends.
Draco shows signs of stress and irritability, and unusual perceptiveness regarding other students. Harry eventually learns that the Potentialis Potion unlocked an emotion sense that he can't switch off, leaving him overwhelmed by crowds or high-strung people, but he slowly learns to cope.
She also encounters a crisis with Marcus Flint, when the teachers suspect that Percy Weasley has been completing his homework (because Harry has been learning the material from Percy, so her work bears a resemblance). She uses her Time Turner to throw them off the trail, by giving the impression that Flint is legitimately capable of completing his work extraordinarily fast.
Professor Snape learns of "Rigel's" magic suppressor, and is angry about her decision to limit her growth, but continues to work with her. She finds, however, that shaped imbuing is out of reach with her reduced power, and has to work around it by removing the suppressor and draining most of her power first. She later has the suppressor adjusted to allow her more power.
At Halloween, chaos strikes the school, when all nearby creatures go on a rampage, including the centaurs, acromantulas, giant squid, and even Professor Lupin (near the full moon). Harry intercepts Remus and contains him before he can attack Professor Pettigrew; the attack ends shortly afterward. Her friends and Professor Snape are quite upset about her heading into danger, but she maintains that it was necessary to prevent public hysteria over a werewolf incident, especially one that might cast doubt on the New Wolfsbane Potion.
An overheard conversation between Mr Malfoy and Professor Snape later reveals that Pettigrew is a traitor to the SOW party and is at Hogwarts in hopes of keeping safe from Riddle. A goblin inspection of the school, looking for magical artefacts, almost discovers Harry's Time Turner, until Professor Snape intervenes, and Harry guesses that Pettigrew has most likely taken an artefact that Riddle wants.
Over the Christmas break, both Harriett and "Rigel" need to attend the New Year's gala, so that Harry can impress Professor Snape enough to let "Rigel" continue passing on "his" teachings to her. Harry and Archie decide to go under their real names, which requires some work to let them project false magical auras, but lets Harry meet her friends as herself, and is made easier by Archie having a Metamorphmagery gift unlocked by Harry's Potentialis Potion. Their practice run is a visit to the Weasleys, which helps in throwing Bill off Harry's scent; he met her in the Lower Alleys and met "Rigel" during the goblins' inspection, noticing their resemblance, but is convinced by seeing that the two cousins are similar yet distinct.
At the gala, Harry is a little disappointed to find that her friends are uncomfortable around her true identity, knowing that she's half-blood. However, she manages to impress Professor Snape enough for him to acquiesce to her learning from "Rigel", and Pansy makes a serious effort to reach out to her. She and Archie then save the life of Tiberius Ogden a second time, when he's stabbed and poisoned by a cursed watch. However, Lily notices that they used "each other's" wands; they pretend to have mixed them up, but being able to successfully do that, especially for delicate healing magic, raises eyebrows of its own.
During this time, Harry is also contacted by Marcus Flint, who calls in the favour she owes him for concealing the ruse. She helps him to evacuate his mother from an abusive home situation, into Harry's apartment. Despite his gruffness, Flint is visibly grateful for her help. While in the Alleys, she also overhears a discussion about the Dominion Jewel, which appears to be what the goblins are searching for, and is apparently very dangerous.
Back at school, Professor Snape takes Harry on as an apprentice, and offers to teach her free-brewing the following year, but wants her to stop using the magic suppressor first. Harry is dubious, and tells him truthfully that she doesn't want the attention that powerful magic would bring. He makes her at least promise to practise control. Their conversation also makes her realise that she has seen Pettigrew with the Dominion Jewel before, and she sends an anonymous tip-off to the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, but doesn't see a response.
She is then nearly exposed at a Quidditch match, when her extensive Time Turner usage, repeating days multiple times, causes her Modified Polyjuice to wear off after just a few (linear) months. To remedy the situation, she exploits the Time Turner to the full, brewing a new batch over the course of a quadruply repeated week; in the process, she meets one of the Lower Alley vampire covens, when she temporarily stays at their hotel. Professor Snape is suspicious, but she pulls off her reinsertion into linear time successfully.
Draco, however, has become suspicious enough of Harry's frequent disappearances that he plants a tracker on her shoes, intending to work out where she goes. He's baffled to see multiple hits at the same time, but leaves the tracker active in hopes of working it out.
Her suspicions of Peter Pettigrew then lead her to discover him researching in the library, and she gets hold of a fragmentary prophecy that he dropped, indicating that the holder of "Dominion" will gain power by dominating other creatures, but pay the price if they fail to dominate. Harry is concerned, but doesn't want to confront him herself, and keeps waiting for the DMLE to act.
In America, Hermione confronts "Harry" and tells him that she knows Harriett Potter is a girl. Archie is taken aback, but decides to cover for the real Harry by claiming to identify as male; Hermione is surprised, and a little concerned about his interactions with his family, but accepting. He also lets her know that he's a Metamorphmagus.
Due to Harry's lack of progress in controlling her magic, Professor Snape brings Tom Riddle to visit her and give advice, as Riddle has experience with similarly powerful magic. However, Riddle is unsympathetic, wanting her to be ambitious and embrace her power, and he forces her to remove the ring, resulting in a maelstrom of wild magic. Harry is able to calm it by expending a lot of her power on destroying conjured targets, but doesn't consider that kind of destruction to be a viable long-term strategy, and turns down his offer of further mentoring. It also turns out that Riddle deliberately mixed some of his own magic into hers, allowing him to sense her presence when nearby.
In April, Harry is in the Forbidden Forest, to practise healing any injured animals, when she finds Pettigrew using the Dominion Jewel to control a young dragon. She escapes and sends a second anonymous tip to law enforcement, but sees no response, and Pettigrew knows that she knows about the Jewel.
Pettigrew then spends his free time for several weeks in the Forest, before ambushing and kidnapping Harry. Upon discovering her Time Turner, he uses it to send them both back a week, then brings her to a warded underground prison and attempts to use the Jewel to steal her magic. At first, he is unsuccessful due to her suppressor locking her magic away; after days of trying, he realises that it's there, and removes it, but her wild magic then attempts to kill him, even when she falls unconscious. They're locked in a stalemate for the rest of the week, at which point he brings them both back another week and takes her to a second chamber underneath the first. However, despite all his efforts, her magic is too unruly for him to dominate, pinning him down and attempting to crush him.
With her magic in complete chaos, Harry retreats inside her mind and finds a repressed memory of her first serious accidental magic, where she wiped Archie's memory of an incident of misbehaviour, and her own memory too. Realising that this was the root of her fear of her own magic, she is able to find peace and accept her own power, trusting her own instincts and morals to steer her magic properly. She pulls her magic back from assaulting Pettigrew, but it's too late for him; having failed to control her, he has lost the Jewel's favour, and it consumes his life force.
The Jewel then offers itself to Harry, who tries to reject it, but it discorporates and enters her mind; she traps it in a mental construct that forces it to obey her commands. She then loans it her magic to escape the destructive resonance of having seven copies of her magical core existing at once (due to Time Turner usage), and waits for several days to be rescued, eating and drinking the ingredients from her Potions kit to survive. Once she catches up to the point in time where she went missing, Draco finds her by using the tracker on her shoes, and Professor Snape rescues her, dehydrated and full of dozens of mild poisons.
In the aftermath, Harry hands in her Time Turner, and reports the events to the Aurors who have finally responded to her tip-off. She finds that the Jewel has constructed elaborate illusions to defend her mind, and that it is still grudgingly obedient to her.
Lucius Malfoy reports the events to Riddle, although he doesn't know every detail, and passes on Harry's message that she forgives Riddle for meddling at Hogwarts again but wants him to stop plotting, since he so often fails. Riddle is incensed, and plots to end "Rigel's" reticence to embrace power.
The Futile Facade
Under pressure from Tom Riddle, "Rigel" participates in the "True Triwizard Tournament", which is intended to prove that pureblood wizards and witches are superior to half-blood or muggle-born; Riddle believes that "Rigel" is the perfect pureblood poster-boy, and rigs the tasks to ensure a pureblood victory. However, after Harry wins, the Diary-construct attacks her, and in the process of fighting back, she is revealed as a half-blood, forcing her to flee from Hogwarts and end the identity swap.
The Dominion Jewel, holding control of all of Harry's magic, starts throwing its weight around inside her mind, so she takes the magic back. However, she does let it have access to a small amount at a time for the purpose of filtering out Riddle's magic. She also lets it see her memories; it's impressed and amused by her ambition and dedication, expressing satisfaction at choosing her for a host.
Having learned to free-duel from Leo, Harry participates in an illegal tournament in the Alleys over the summer. Remus catches her doing it, but decides to keep it from her parents so that he can go along and protect her rather than pushing her away. Harry wins her first two brackets and puts up a good showing before a narrow defeat in her third, but Leo is drugged before his final match and almost killed by his opponent before scraping a victory. Harry suspects that the Diary-construct, Voldemort, is involved and recruiting.
She also helps Leo to brew a lifesaving potion for a girl in the Alleys, and in the process, introduces Hermione to the Hursts' clinic, where Hermione starts volunteering.
Her family then attends the Quidditch World Cup, where the stadium is attacked by Death Eaters, who damage and destabilise the Top Box and drop anti-muggle leaflets. Harry helps her family to evacuate, but there are multiple casualties, creating widespread fear and concern about the terrorists' aims.
At school, the "True Triwizard Tournament" is announced, intended to let nine Champions of different blood statuses compete to prove which type is stronger. Riddle is heavily involved, and Harry suspects he's rigged it to ensure a Pureblood victory, so she doesn't want to be part of it. However, Hermione comes to participate, and Riddle pressures "Rigel" to compete. Harry eventually agrees to an Unbreakable Vow to take part and do her best, in exchange for Riddle denouncing the terrorists and making a Vow that if she wins, he will never again introduce or support legislation discriminating against muggle-borns in employment, healthcare, or marriage.
Harry and Hermione team up for the first task, fighting their way through an assortment of creatures in the Forbidden Forest; despite not finishing first, the scoring metrics put Harry in the lead. Both end up in the top three after the second task, which is an airborne collection of trapped stepping stones. Harry then learns, however, that Riddle is pushing to pass his marriage law before the Tournament is complete and thus evade the Vow. She's furious, but he just considers her naive.
The third task is a bracketed dueling contest; Harry has to fight more duels than any other contestant, but comes out on top using her array of unconventional skills. Hermione, however, is brutally eliminated by Jacob Owens, leaving Owens as the muggle-born champion, Fleur as the half-blood, and "Rigel" as the pure-blood. Harry notices that the bracket arrangement forced the muggle-born champions to face each other early, ensuring that only one could advance to the later rounds.
During Hermione's time at Hogwarts, she also researches the Fade, a wasting illness that frequently causes second and subsequent children in magical families to sicken and die. She discovers that it's directly correlated with "hyper-pure" families having all-magical blood stretching back many generations, and essentially never happens in families with recent nonmagical ancestors. Harry is astounded by the result, but the two of them realise that pure-blood society will not readily accept the idea of marrying muggle-borns, due to ingrained prejudices.
Hermione attends the Yule Ball with Viktor Krum, and Archie attends as "Harry". "Harry" is visibly besotted with Hermione, causing widespread doubt about the seriousness of the engagement between Harry and Archie, but because Hermione believes him to be biologically female, she doesn't think she can return his feelings. Harry also has a conversation with Riddle at the ball, and realises, to her shock, that the purpose of his marriage law is both good and bad; he wants to encourage marriages with half-bloods and thus stop the Fade, while still excluding muggle-borns. He invites her to throw her lot in with him and support his efforts, but she insists that there has to be another way, and they part on essentially neutral terms.
The three champions then retrieve hostages from the Black Lake as the fourth task. Owens continues to show callousness by prioritising secondary objects over rescuing his girlfriend (who dumps him over it), while Fleur abandons the other objects to rescue her sister. The task is once again biased, as Harry was able to collect the other objects on the way to her own hostage instead of having to choose between them.
Before the fifth task, Harry contacts Fleur and trades the information gained from her Lake items for Fleur's promise to let her win if they're neck and neck. For the task, they climb a tower while drugged; Harry finishes first, using a sample of Archie's blood instead of her own to pass a barrier around the finish line, and while recovering afterward, overhears a conversation with Owens suggesting that he's a plant.
After hearing of the deal that Harry made with Riddle, Dumbledore is impressed by her efforts to make a difference, and invites her to his spring soiree, where she publicly affirms to Madam Longbottom that she supports Light ideas of equality and nondiscrimination. Archie's cousin Nymphadora Tonks is then attacked elsewhere and her body dumped at the party, having lost a great deal of blood, but Harry is able to heal her.
The final task is a maze of creatures guarding the Triwizard Cup. Harry reaches it first with Fleur's help, and arrives on the winner's podium — where she is ambushed by the Voldemort construct, currently possessing a vampire, and several of his followers, who trap her inside wards that even Dumbledore is unable to break.
Voldemort leaves the vampire's body and uses a potion to gain a new body resembling his original form, then announces his intention to steal "Rigel's" magic with a ritual intended to pass on bloodline gifts in the absence of blood heirs. However, the ritual fails because Harry isn't related to Tonks (whose blood was also involved) and isn't pure-blood. Furious, he invades her mind to learn the full truth, but the Dominion Jewel defeats his intrusion and dumps Riddle's filtered magic on his avatar, with the resonance between them causing Voldemort agonizing pain.
Harry breaks free in the confusion, brings down the wards, and flees from Hogwarts before she can be arrested for "blood identity theft". Draco catches her collecting or incinerating all her possessions, and tries to persuade her to stay and work things out, but she insists their friendship was a lie, and calls in his life debt to prevent the Malfoys from helping to search for her.
She then activates the contingency plan, reaching her apartment and arranging things so that she appears to have been living there full-time for years. Meanwhile, her father goes to AIM to find out what Harry knows, and discovers that Archie has taken Harry's place; after questioning Archie, he bursts in on Harry's apartment, but she is prepared and the story holds up. Archie and Harry persuade the Aurors that Rigel was a third party whom Archie met at a junior Quidditch league, and that they don't know his true identity, but believed him to be a pureblood; they are both grounded, and Archie is fined for academic fraud, but they aren't charged with conspiracy to commit blood identity theft.
"Rigel's" Triwizard victory and revelation as a half-blood cause widespread upheaval in public opinion, including a general shift against the Pureblood establishment. The marriage law is soundly defeated, and Remus suggests that they next target the exclusion of half-bloods from Hogwarts. However, both Riddle and Snape are determined to track Rigel down, for their own reasons. Riddle intends to trace Parseltongue family lines, while Snape uses a sample of Rigel's magic as a scrying focus, determining that "he" is still in south-east England.
The Malignant Masquerade
Harry tries to put the ruse behind her as her friends and enemies all do their best to track down "Rigel".
Riddle attempts to make Rigel resurface, by declaring that attendance at the Crowning Ceremony is a requirement for the Triwizard winner, thus calling on her Unbreakable Vow to participate. Harry uses the Modified Polyjuice to become Rigel again, and meets with Professor Dumbledore and the Order of the Phoenix to plan strategies. Between the Invisibility Cloak, her Animagus transformation, and assistance from the Order and other champions who are sympathetic to Rigel, she succeeds in claiming the Rod of Zuriel (which fulfils her Vow and ends her obligations) and escaping, but she finds that Voldemort has destroyed her promised safehouse and stolen the Philosopher's Stone.
