The Race is up
The day of the second task had come and the three teams were assembled at the same stadium that had held the first round's tasks. The stadium was packed again, as the huge success and entertainment of the first round had caused a really fast sold out of the available tickets. This time around they didn't start out in the meeting room, but in the arena itself. They were told to stand on seven round platforms that stood about two feet above the ground. Once all the twenty one champions were in position, Bagman started announcing.
"Welcome everybody to the second round of the reworked Triwizard Tournament. Our champions had the past three months to work out the clues given to them on the pieces of the puzzles that they earned by their performance in the first round. To remind everybody, currently Durmstrang is in third place with one hundred and fifty four points, Beauxbatons is in second place with one hundred and seventy two points and currently in first place is Hogwarts with one hundred and ninety six points," Bagman declared and the spectators clapped for all schools, but cheered the loudest for Hogwarts.
"Now, we still have two tasks that are going to be challenging for our champions, so nobody is out of the game yet. Everything is open until the very last second!" Bagman stated, "Today we will see how our champions fare with another mostly unknown task. They got hints, but will only be informed about the actual task today. Once our champions have been transported to their destinations by the portkeys that are built into the platforms that they are currently standing on, we will show you the full set of clues that our champions could win. I will also tell you which school got which clues. I will also then inform you about the task in itself."
Then see-through walls rose up around the platforms on which the champions stood. Suddenly three of them were transported away.
"Ah, it seems our magical selection has taken their hostages. This is the first special part about this task. The youngest among the school champions were taken away to pose as hostages for the rest of their teams. But not only that, they will have to win their teams time. Each task that the rest of the team has to perform, in teams of two at that, this time around, has a time limit. The youngest champions can win their teams additional time in form of jokers. A team can call for activation of a joker at any time. A joker is worth two minutes additional time and to win it, the three hostages have to win five stars in their personal challenges.
"Once the three tasks, which will be done with all teams competing against each other at the same time, like it was done in the challenges in the first round, are over, the six champions of a school have one final challenge to beat to free their hostage and win an additional bonus. The team to first free their hostage will win fifty additional points, the second one will get thirty five points and the third one just twenty points. It is a race against the clock. In the end the total points will be tallied again and added to the already earned points.
"In each challenge you can collect five stars, which will be worth two points each. Any second that is left from the allotted time for a round, plus the activated jokers of course, will be turned into points as well. Any injury, like in the last round, will cost you one point for each competitor. Each task has a time limit of fifteen minutes, which is very narrow as a window of time. Therefore you all better hope that your hostages manage to win you a lot of jokers," Bagman told them, "For our audience, you will be able to see the progress of the hostages in their winning of jokers on the large screens that JWT has again sponsored for the Tournament. The champions will know how many jokers they have available thanks to a special bracelet that they will be given at the location of their tasks. Of course you will be shown their actions on the screens as well. As it is February, the tasks were prepared at different locations than the heated stadium."
What nobody knew was that Bagman, had he planned the task, would have let the three champions rescue a hostage from the Black Lake, but Minister Black had refused to let that happen. Not only was it boring for the audience, which Bagman could admit he hadn't really thought of, and they would freeze to death on open stands that hovered at the side of the lake. This way the comfort of the audience was assured, they could sell drinks and snacks to make more profit and he could comment on the progress of the teams during each task. He personally had to admit that he liked this a lot better than the first idea.
"Now, please turn your eyes towards the screens, where we will have live pictures from our three hostages. Firstly Miss Gruber from Durmstrang Institute, then secondly Mr Sanjoir from Beauxbatons Academy and lastly Mr Potter-Black from Hogwarts School," Bagman continued and everybody looked at the screens where the three hostages were taken from their portkey tubes and brought into different rooms which built a trigram, "Each of the rooms has a small monitor that will give them their tasks. They won't be aware of what is going on outside of their room. The only thing they will be informed about is if a joker is activated by their teams. And by the way, any unused joker is worth an additional five points in the end. So our champions should hurry in finishing their challenges."
Huge applause came from the spectators. Then a hole in the ground opened and something similar to the sphere that chose the champions on Hallowe'en appeared behind each group of champions. One sphere for each school. Inside each sphere the spectators and the champions could see six balls flying around.
"Now I pass on to Headmaster Dumbledore, who will choose which champions will become a team for this round. Now, please, Headmaster, cast a spell at each sphere to choose the first team for each school," Bagman instructed.
Dumbledore did just that and used stinging hexes, as it didn't matter which spell he used. He started with the Durmstrang sphere, then hit the Beauxbatons sphere and then lastly the Hogwarts sphere. Two balls shot out from the spheres and then exploded in a small cloud of smoke each, which showed the face of the champion that would be on the team.
"And we are starting with an interesting pairing right of the beat. For Durmstrang the first team to take on a challenge will be Viktor Krum and Katharina Gianos. For Beauxbatons the team consists of Rosalie Richard and René Callabier. For Hogwarts the team is Fred Weasley and Cedric Diggory. The second teams will now be decided upon by Madame Maxime. Please Madame, activate the spheres again."
Madame Maxime cast in quick order and the next two balls shot out, this time exploding in beautiful flower petals that also formed the faces of the teammates.
"For Durmstrang Ivan Romanov and Nikolai Smirnov, for Beauxbatons Fleur Delacour and Bastian Marquis and for Hogwarts Daphne Greengrass and Christopher Wallace," Bagman said, "Please activate the last spheres, Deputy Headmaster Rissof.
Rissof did so without much enthusiasm. It was already clear who the last teams would be, but the effect of the explosion was certainly worthwhile doing it this way. The balls explodes in fireworks and the falling sparkles formed the faces this time around.
"And last but not least we have Oliana Pinter and Zephyr Itanov for Durmstrang, Anabelle Poitier and Jean-Paul Clotier for Beauxbatons and George Weasley and Jennifer Fallmouth for Hogwarts."
Bagman waited for the applause to die down before he continued. The platforms of the students switched them around that the teammates now stood in line. On the middle screen was now the phrase 'Race of Legends' for all to see.
"Our six champions will now be taken to areas that were designed to represent one of the three following countries," Bagman stated, "Greece" The left screen showed a map of the country's geological form, "Arabia," The image changed to Arabia's form, "And Australia," The last form appeared on the screen, "What awaits them will only be revealed once they are going to start. I certainly hope they used the time they had since the last round to prepare thoroughly. Well, time to choose which team gets which country. Minister, if you would please?"
Sirius stood from his seat and levitated three balls each, one red, one yellow and one blue, over the tubes with the champions from the schools. They spun around wildly before Sirius suddenly cancelled the spell and let them drop onto the groups, where they were drawn to hover over one of the lines. Then the screen showed all three forms of the countries and they turned one of the colours of the balls.
"There you have it, folks. Team one of Durmstrang will get Greece, together with teams two from Beauxbatons and three from Hogwarts. Arabia will be faced by teams two from Durmstrang and Hogwarts, as well as team three from Beauxbatons and Australia's secrets will be explored by teams one from Beauxbatons and Hogwarts and team three from Durmstrang. Good-bye to our champions for the moment, we will soon see them on the screens again," Bagman declared and the portkeys activated, taking all champions to their destinations.
Cedric and Fred looked around themselves. They were inside a round area that was surrounded by grey walls made of stone.
"Any ideas what we should do first, Cedric?" Fred asked.
"Not yet. We don't know what kind of task we have this time around, except for collecting stars again. We don't have to compete directly against the others, but we will only have limited time. And we don't know when we will get to start. As we have fifteen minutes time for the challenge in the first place, unless Harry wins us time jokers, we need to work efficiently," Cedric summed a few things they knew up.
"So, we start out with summoning again, then the point me spell that Hermione modified. Our country is Australia, which probably means we can expect snakes, boxing kangaroos, eye-scratchers and bats," Fred listed animals they had researched of the country beforehand.
"And a good number of others that could give us trouble. Not to mention that aborigine shamans have strange magical abilities that they can use without a wand. We need to take that into consideration. I doubt they would pass up this show for the challenge," Cedric pondered.
Fred could only agree. They didn't know when they would be allowed to start, but they would use their time waiting to make some plans that they could use. The team had worked on different scenarios to use and they all could work in all kinds of teams. They wanted to win this round as well to have a nice head start for the last round. After two minutes they heard a part of the wall slide aside and they found a box sitting there. Looking inside, they found the bracelets they had been told about inside and they put them on. To their joy one star was already glowing, indicating that Harry had already secured one time joker. They didn't know how many they would actually need, but the more they had available in a pinch, the better.
The other two Hogwarts teams were in similar rooms to the one Fred and Cedric currently occupied. The spectators were shown how the champions reacted, but they couldn't hear their voices. It was only background information right now anyway, as the big screens focused on Harry, Stefanie and Gregoire. They were shown their first chance to win their teams time jokers.
Harry looked at the screen. There were instructions to what he had to do to win his team jokers that could either be used to finish a round with more time or bring them points in the end. The first task was memory casting. A sequence of lights would light up on the targets that would appear in the room in a minute and he had to memorise the sequence and it would only be shown once. He then had to cast spells at them in exactly that sequence. For every five correctly hit targets he would win a star. Five stars made a joker. But if he missed a target or hit the wrong one, he would only get the first secured star. The one way out was to secure the stars, for example hitting fifteen targets right and then calling out stop and start the next sequence.
Harry got ready. He had practiced his aim in training, as they had suspected that hitting targets would sooner or later come up. Even if nobody had thought about this kind of thing. Well, it vaguely reminded him of a game that Dudley had had when they had been children. A disk that had four fields that you had to hit in the right order and which played music. Dudley had always lost, much to his ire, which meant that the disk had been discarded and Harry got to play with it if he knew that his aunt was too busy otherwise and wouldn't notice.
The targets turned out to be a wall with square fields. There were eight fields in each row and eight rows in total. Harry grinned. Now his forced chess playing with Ron might come in handy. He mentally marked the fields with one to eight for the rows from the top to the bottom and A to H from left to right. While he might not be the best at developing strategies in how to prevent that Ron took his chessmen apart again, and again, and again, really depressing that thought, he was very good at knowing where each of his chessmen was and he at least could make Ron work to get his figures.
Then it began with an easy sequence of ten lights in follow. Harry concentrated. He wanted to get his team this joker. He cast stinging spells, as it was one of the easiest and least draining spells he knew. He easily managed to get the two stars and he suspected that the other two would be able to do the same. The next sequence was longer, twenty fields long and Harry started to hit the fields again. He wondered for how long they would do it this way before giving him harder challenges.
After two minutes he could already say that he had won one joker for his team. After five, he had two and the challenge changed. Now he was playing memory with the wall. With motives from the legends that they had researched. Well, it would at least entertain the audience that was surely watching what the champions did.
"And now that the three hostages have had some time to win a few jokers for their teams, it's time to get the challenges for the other six champions of each school started. Minister, if you would please draw the first country's challenge to be faced?" Bagman called out.
Sirius drew a ball from a bag and threw it into the middle of the arena, where it burst open and revealed the shape of Australia.
"And the three teams that got the Australia challenge are going to be the first ones up. Now we will show you the clues that the teams could get and which ones each team got. First was a rebus, which they had to figure out after solving the way to put the puzzles together and see what was hidden on them. They needed to sort themselves from oldest to youngest around the puzzles for that. The rebus had the clue 'Race of Legends'. Then there was a map of the world with the countries Greece, Arabia and Australia being highlighted. The third puzzle showed them six different items, the fourth had seven people on it, and we hinted that they would be working in teams of two while the last would have a different task.
The fifth puzzle had the ages of the champions at the time of the challenge on them. We circled the age of the youngest member to inform them that this member of the team would be singled out for the special task. There were two more puzzles, which showed six creatures that the champions would have to face in the tasks and the last one that they would have to face certain elements again, but in different fashion than the last task."
All the pictures on the puzzles were shown to the audience on the large screens that didn't show the three hostages working on winning their teams jokers.
"The first three were the puzzles that all teams got. Beauxbatons and Hogwarts also got the complete fourth puzzle with the seven persons being split in three teams and a solo player. Hogwarts had part of the puzzle with the ages of the champions on it. The other two puzzles weren't given out, therefore none of the schools will know about the creatures and the elements," Bagman explained, "Now, let's direct our attention to these three teams, which will enter the Australia challenge in just one minute.
"For Beauxbatons there are Rosalie Richard and René Callabier, for Durmstrang Oliana Pinter and Zephyr Itanov will participate and for Hogwarts the team consists of Fred Weasley and Cedric Diggory."
Cheers erupted and the hostages' images were shifted to the upper left corner of the screens. Next to the small pictures, were the stats for each team, meaning the number of won stars and the time used and what amount of time remained, the jokers available and the pictures of the team currently doing the challenge. The remainder of the three screens now showed the three teams that would start the first challenge on the remaining screen space.
Inside the room that Fred and Cedric had been transported to, a countdown was suddenly activated on one side of the wall.
"Seems as if it's starting," Fred commented, taking his wand out of its holster on his left arm.
"I'm ready," replied Cedric, drawing his own wand.
When the timer reached zero, a wall shifted to the side and they exited the room into a long corridor at which's end they found light. They checked if there were any spells on the corridor and found it clean. They ran towards the light, their wand lit to give them light. Soon they reached the exit of the corridor and saw a map of Australia on the wall.
"Wait a moment," Cedric told Fred, who hadn't looked at the map too closely, "There are marked spots on the map."
"Could they tell us where the stars are hidden?" Fred asked hopefully.
"Maybe. Let's write them down," He said and pulled a small notebook and a pen from his pocket.
Daphne had pointed out that it might help to be able to write down clues that could be helpful later on. Quickly he noted the places of the crosses on the map, as it couldn't be taken from the wall, five of them smaller and two larger, and then they entered the field that would be their challenge site. Once they exited the corridor, the entrance vanished, making them glad that they had noted the spots on the map, as it was inaccessible to them right now. The area where they were currently looked like dry steppe. There was sand, some small plants, rocks and it was very warm.
"Accio stars," Fred called out, but nothing happened.
"Would have been too easy if it worked again," Cedric said.
"Worth a try though. Let's see, we have to find five stars. We also need to be ready for anything from the legends we memorised," Fred warned.
Cedric nodded and they set off. There had been one small cross mark on the map close to the point labelled their location. That meant that the area was formed like the shape of Australia, just smaller. They only had to go to the location and see if there really was a star hidden. On their bracelets a timer had activated, telling them how much time they had left. It had started ticking down once they had stepped into the area.
Harry looked at the water that had appeared around him. A ring of water, perhaps two metres deep and one metre wide separated him from the walls. There wasn't anything but him and the water in the room. Or so it appeared. The screen on the wall, which was behind the ring of water, told him that his next task was dodging water shots from creatures that would appear from the ring of water. He could only dodge, use spells to deflect the water and anything he came up with to defend himself, but he wasn't allowed to attack the creatures.
Then a timer started and when it hit zero, a pink seahorse like the one from the battle royal in the first round jumped from the water to his left and shot a stream of water at him. He barely managed to duck and the water shot over him. It continued in that manner. The seahorse, a kappa, flying fishes and five other creatures took turns in trying to drench him. He didn't manage to dodge everything, but every successful dodge or block earned him points that counted towards earning jokers. He wondered what other challenges the organizers had come up with and how long his stamina would hold.
Fred and Cedric fought their way through underbrush and had to trap two snakes already. There probably would be more of them. They had used a point me spell to see in which direction the marked spot was. One of the seventh year Ravenclaws had found a way to use the point me spell, which normally only told you where north was, to lock onto a certain location. Now they were using that to find the star they needed. Finally, after cutting down plants and dodging creatures for three minutes, they reached a kind of stone altar on which a golden star rested.
Fred carefully tried to take it, but a barrier sprung up that zapped his hand.
"We need to bring that down before we can take the star," He told Cedric, nursing his stinging hand.
"Yeah, there has to be a mechanism that deactivates the barrier. Normally a switch that isn't noticed immediately," Cedric agreed.
They started searching, but there wasn't anything obvious.
"Hey, remember the legend of Aesior?" Fred said suddenly, "There was something similar in it."
"Damn, you're right. The clue to the magical flute was protected by a powerful barrier that he could only bring down if he put siphoning stones around it and waited for a minute for them to absorb the magic in the barrier for him to grab the clue," Cedric stated.
"That means we have to find those stones. To make it fair they should be close to our position. Otherwise it wouldn't work with the time limit," Fred agreed.
They searched and thankfully the stones weren't hidden that well. Mostly in hollow trees, in bird nests or under roots of trees. They quickly gathered all they could find and placed them around the barrier. They waited for the barrier to lose power and after fifty seconds Fred could grab the first star.
"Now I know why they said that our hostages better win us a lot of jokers. Fifteen minutes is an impossible time limit to finish the task. Harry thankfully already won us four jokers. No, now it's five," Fred stated, seeing that the fifth joker mark had just lit up, "Let's go to the next closest position. We have seven and a half minutes left. Not that much."
Cedric nodded and they ran as fast as they could to reach the next marked position on the map. A large marker and a small marker were very close together there.
The spectators watched how the three teams went about the challenge. The Durmstrang team raced past the map without ever noticing that it could help them in their task. The Beauxbatons team noticed it while running past it, but were too late to profit from it, as both, when they turned around to have a look at it, found that the entrance had closed up on them. The Hogwarts students cheered when their team looked at the map and noted the locations of the treasures hidden in the area down.
Followed by that was the wild goose chase for stars by the teams of the guest schools, compared to the Hogwarts team, which went to the closest location to get the first star. The other two teams split up to cover more ground to search for the stars. Meanwhile the added jokers that the three hostages were earning with their own challenges were displayed over the images of the teams. When the first earned star for Hogwarts lit up, the Hogwarts contingent cheered and applauded for the first success in this round. Not to mention that every lit joker also was cheered about. So far things looked well for the host school's team.
But nobody wanted to celebrate too early. There were still a lot of things to do before it would be clear which school won this round.
Cedric and Fred were confronted with a very narrow rope bridge over a ravine.
"We need to get over to the other side. The marked spots were over there," Fred stated.
"You're right. But first let's make sure that the ropes will hold our weight. I don't fancy falling down there," Cedric commented, pointing down.
"Good point," Fred nodded and both started casting strengthening charms onto the ropes, after which they walked over the ten metres wide ravine, one after the other.
They then performed the point me spell again and fount it twitching between two positions.
"Seems as if we are close to two of the marks. Which one do we take first?" Cedric asked.
"The one to the left. If I recall correctly, that one was a small mark, which should be a star. The last small mark was a star as well. How much time is left?" Fred asked and looked at his bracelet, "Four minutes and twenty seconds. We will have to use up a few jokers to finish this round."
"Thankfully Harry is busy giving us those jokers. We already have five lit ones, meaning ten additional minutes. With how large this place is, we will probably need at least three to finish," Cedric said.
"Then don't let us waste precious time," Fred declared and they ran towards the left signal from the spell.
Soon they found a field of stone pillars, surrounding a stone temple in the middle of the field that held another stone altar with a star on it, that stood at regular distances from each other, but still a good deal apart, which meant they would have to jump from one to the other normally.
"Wait, that was in 'Hunt for the Spirit Jewel'," Cedric stopped Fred, "If we step onto those pillars, there will be a large number that will crumble, letting us fall down into the swamp down there," He pointed to the swamp at the foot of the pillars, "In the legend the hero managed to pass the obstacle by conjuring ropes to tied them all together."
"Then let's get to work. It was a really good thing we researched the legend as thoroughly as we did. This at least gave us clues what was expected of us. Wasn't there a magical swamp monster in the story as well?" Fred reminded Cedric.
"Yes, it would hit the pillars to make them shake and make it harder to get to the other side," Cedric agreed, "So perhaps we should consider that as well."
"I have the perfect solution. George and I worked on this spell for our product line," Fred said and swished his wand at Cedric's belt and tapped it three times. Then he repeated it with his own belt, "This will let us hover a centimetre over any kind of surface without falling down. The spell isn't strong enough to really let us fly, but it will help in this situation."
"I'm constantly astonished how good you are at developing spells and potions. Let's get to work, we have a challenge to master," Cedric stated and the two started conjuring ropes to connect the pillars with each other.
When they had a net of ropes all over the place, they stepped onto the first two pillars. Only to feel them starting to shake under their feet, but, thanks to the hover charm, they didn't lose their balance. They nodded and then started hopping from one pillar to the next, Fred once stopping Cedric from falling, as he had misjudged the distance between the pillars. They needed three minutes to cross the field.
"We need to activate a joker. This is taking more time than expected," Cedric said.
"You're right. Joker, activate," Fred called out and one joker sign on the bracelet lit up and then went out. In turn their time was increased by two minutes.
They went up the stairs of the temple to the altar. This time there wasn't any barrier and they could collect the star easily.
"Despite the stone pillar field, this was fairly easy," Cedric commented.
"Probably only because Hermione forced us to learn the legends by heart to be prepared. Not to mention practice all kinds of spells that would help imitate the solutions to the quests," Fred countered while they jumped back over the field, already using the point me spell again to find the location of the large mark.
"We really need to do something nice for our research teams. They gave up countless hours to help us prepare," Cedric mentioned.
"Certainly, but first we have to win this," Fred replied and the two boys ran towards the next place.
Now they were grateful that Angelina Johnson had pointed out that in a race they would need stamina to have a chance in working against the clock. Therefore all the champions, next to practicing their magic, had undergone a harsh training regime. It certainly paid off now.
The next target seemed to be far more important than the stars, if the protection around it was anything to go by.
"We should be careful. This seems to be a higher level than the protections before," Fred commented.
"True. I count at least three different kinds of carnivorous birds flying around that island. And I would bet that there are nasty things in the water as well," Cedric replied.
"Means we need protection from above and below. Do you remember that spell to turn a piece of wood into a wooden box that McGonagall taught in fourth year?" Fred asked.
"I see what you mean. We could make that box, use it as a float and fortress in one. We would only have to enlarge it to hold both of us and secure it against water getting inside," Cedric nodded.
They quickly got a large piece of wood, as the larger the piece of wood, the less magic you needed to use for the transfiguration, and created their wooden box. Then they hit it with charms to fill the holes between the wood with material that would waterproof it, but still let it swim. They entered through a door they made and then propelled the floating box towards the island, with the birds pecking the box from the outside, some of the sharp beaks getting through, forcing Fred to hit them with stinging hexes while Cedric continued propelling the boat towards the island.
"It will be annoying to get out with them attacking," Cedric stated.
"I suggest a lightning spell as soon as we reached the island. They should scatter from that," Fred commented, still hitting any beak that got through.
When they felt the float hit the sand of the island, they opened the door a little and both shot lighting spells at the birds, and once one was fully hit, it caused the others to fly away, squawking indignantly.
"Hurry, we need to use the time," Cedric urged and the two ran towards the centre of the island.
They were attacked by sniping badgers and conjured shields to deflect the stones they were throwing at them and then had to escape another field of desert fox traps that tried to keep them from the treasure site. Finally they made it there and the creatures stopped their assault on them. There they found two shovels and a sign.
"Magic free zone. To find the treasure, you have to dig for it. Note that the time remaining of your challenge will only pass at half speed inside the magic free zones," Fred read out, "At least something. Let's dig. This seems to be important."
Cedric nodded and both took a shovel and started digging.
I know that you hate cliffhangers, but te chapter would have turned out way too long if I hadn't stopped here. The next part is already in work and about halfway done. Till next time.