Here's another chapter of Feral. The previous one had a few complaints about the task being too short. For the record, I think I did the right thing on that one, since I covered it in a couple of hundred words and I think that was adequate, but this one has a longer detailing of the task so I hope you like that.
I hope you all enjoy it. And please let me know of any interest.
I own nothing.
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Jasmine and Caroline, as Ravens, were well aware of the fact that, in the vast majority of situations, they were more willing to express their emotions than their Slytherin friends. Well, that was the case for Harry and Daphne. Tracy was generally enthusiastic outside of school but felt the need to blend in to her house. This... transparency was obvious at the moment as the two visibly showed their concern for Harry, and to an extent Fleur, after Bagman made such an unfortunate announcement.
The two girls sat next to each other, neither realising they were crushing the others' hand as they held on for dear life, and tears filled their eyes. Next to them, Tracy had reduced her worry to a slight tremble in her lower lip, though her own hands were clamped on her upper arms, and Daphne sat stoic. Later, when questioned, the 'ice queen' would calmly explain to them that she had always had faith in Harry, and berate them in that they, too, should have known he would thrive.
She would refuse to explain the origins of the nail-shaped punctures in her palms.
Despite the differences in their reactions, each girl had 100% of their focus on the black haired, soot covered, champion they were supporting; along with a very good portion of the audience.
In the anticipatory silence that overtook the crowd after their excited exclamations, a quiet whimper drew the angry, cold violet eyes of the Greengrass heiress to the girl she had just recently punched. It was unfortunate, in a way, but the unnamed girl had let out a wolf-whistle upon seeing Harry's form post-fire, and that had directed Daphne's ire towards her. With a sneer, the Slytherin girl turned her focus to the rest of the audience as Bagman let his previous statement hang in an attempt at showmanship.
Most people were excited, and with good reason. The tasks were a wonderful source of entertainment and thus people were happy that another one was upcoming. But there were a select few that clearly felt differently about the recent revelation.
The one that drew Daphne's attention, and this was the first time she could ever say such a thing, was Thomas Potter. She was thrilled that he looked so terrified; after the sickening grin she had spotted on his face when Harry 'died', the Greengrass heiress genuinely hoped the little bastard would die in this. It would save the trouble of doing it herself.
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Albus Dumbledore was not happy with the decision to have another challenge; one that posed a very real, if less significant than the previous challenge's, threat to the champions, immediately after the first. He could not condone putting them in more danger, and had argued this point vehemently. Even he, however, could be overruled; and the other judges had agreed that this would be an effective measure to prevent anybody from cheating.
Well, stop them from cheating more than was expected; it was well known that most of the teachers wanted glory for their school in the eyes of the international community, after all. None of the judges had known what to expect in this second task, and so the officials knew that no champion would 'find out' about the immediate challenge. Each, also, had confidence that one of the inferior students would never be able to fair better than the those taught by their school.
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James Potter watched with mixed emotions. Extremely mixed.
Once his son... one of his sons, had told him what the first task was, after Hagrid revealed the nature to him, James had done everything in his power to help Thomas prepare to face the dragon. The brown haired lad had taken a while to get the summoning charm down, but there had still been enough time for the two to work on his skills on a broom under the pretence of some father-son bonding time. By the time this challenge rolled around, James and Lily, who he had repeatedly reassured, were confident that Thomas would be fine and dandy. While the same could not be said for his eldest, James knew that to call Harry a capable wizard would be an understatement and so the worry was only slight on his part, more stress coming from Lily's worrying than his own.
He knew his wife was not anywhere near as confident in Harry's safety.
Whether that was simply because of guilt from their alienating him, or the worry that came instinctively along with being a mother, James did not know, but the fear she now felt for both their children's safety was palpable and he knew that she was fragile before the first task. How she would fare through this surprise, James had no idea.
-()-()-()-
And Harry?
Harry was shocked... Worried, even.
Briefly.
Then he was happy. Hopefully they would include something more physically taxing for this second task. His blood was racing from the dragon and the danger he had been in, but nothing had really happened. He had cast a few rather simple spells, and the Dragon had been tricked. Sure, he could have fought it, but how could that possibly end well for him? Either he would struggle and be injured; even risking death, or, at the very least, he would unnecessarily draw attention to himself from a crowd outside of Hogwarts.
Plus, since he was in this contest Harry might as well give it his all and, based on the fact that the other 3 had had Merlin knows how long to prepare for the first task, he was best suited for a second, on his part, surprise. That boded well for his chances in the task, and inspired a certain smugness in the black haired teen. As long as it wasn't something that was particularly lucky for one of the others, that is. Harry would not be surprised if it turned out Karkaroff had somehow rigged the next challenge to have them on brooms, searching for something roughly the size of a snitch that, surprise surprise, could fly.
One of the worst things about this revelation, to Harry, was that Bagman had misled them. He made it sound like the challenge would start immediately. It'd been half an hour, now, since Harry fetched the golden egg, yet here he and the other three were; sat back in the Champions' tent. Sure, it made sense that they'd have to prepare, but this was just letting his adrenaline fade.
That was just boring.
Imagine, if you will, putting a wild animal; one that was just barely tamed, into a fight, and then taking that animal back out of the blasted fight and refusing him any release for his bloodlust. In Harry's opinion, this was not a good idea but if they understood that aspect of him, Harry wouldn't be here. But this problem was not currently important.
The main problem, though likely only from Harry's point of view, was Fleur and the guilt that rolling off her in waves; strong enough that the emotion's scent dominated his senses. He'd noticed this 15, or so, minutes earlier. It was horrid that she felt so bad, and Harry was racking his brain to figure out what he could do to relieve her of this. What he considered a reassuring smile had not cut it. If anything it had made it worse. Harry guessed that this must be because Fleur thought he was not aware she knew what the task was going to be and neglected to tell him.
At the same time, the girl in question was worrying about how she should apologise to Harry. Well, not just that. Fleur also needed to apologise to Caroline for not sharing with her friend the dangers that would be faced by herself and Harry. Even if the penalties for cheating were rarely exercised, Fleur did not want to risk it; hopefully Caroline would understand that. On top of that, Fleur, sensibly in her own mind, assumed Harry would know. It was obvious that Krum and Thomas knew the task going in to it, after all, so why wouldn't Harry?
Neither of the pair got to act; on their confusion and guilt respectively, as a boisterous man bounced into the wizarding tent with a jovial expression on his face. Bagman's excitement did not bode well for three of the Champions, and was only barely a good sign for Harry. None of the four were dumb enough to mistake the sign; the man was excited for one reason and one reason only. The next task was about to begin.
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"This is one of the most simple, yet exciting tasks your three schools have ever had the privilege of participating in in the Tri-Wizard tourney!" Bagman announced to the crowd; the stands they sat in now set out in a one and a half kilometre straight stretch. "The objective for the challengers is quite simple, yet very effective! The stretch of land before you is modelled after a muggle creation called an obstacle course! They use their non-magical version to train people for their standing army; let us see how our Champions fair on this improved course! They will run the course only once. The first to finish will be rewarded an extra 20 points; the second will receive 10 points, while the third finisher will be rewarded 5 points. The one who comes in last will receive no bonus points, and so will be left at a rather serious disadvantage!"
What were those glances? Harry couldn't help but wonder. It may have been his imagination, but the other three competitors seemed to be shooting not-so-subtle looks at him. He wasn't quite sure what these meant, but guessed they were not positive.
"The regulations are quite simple! The course must be completed on foot; so no broom-summoning, the competitors are not permitted to directly, and intentionally, do lasting damage to each other or to render another unconscious on purpose and, lastly, you must stay in the course at all times!" The man's grin could be heard in his next words. "That is all! Our 4 champions will begin on the word go!
"On your marks... Get set... Go!" The mystery of why Bagman had used the muggle saying to begin the race was forcefully knocked out of Harry's head an instant later.
"Incarcerous!" Three voices rang out, as the tip of each owners' wand was pointed at the black haired animagus. Thomas, terrible at aiming even here, managed to wrap the ropes around Harry's face, while Fleur got his legs and Krum his arms; muffling the curse he let out as he fell to the floor. His wand fell next to him as its owner collapsed.
Fleur, Victor and Thomas took off at a sprint; each with a different view on what they just did.
Victor, of course, was not bothered in the least by removing his fiercest competitor from this task. He had seen Harry running before; the fact that he did by choice showing that, for a wizard, the other would be formidable. Victor also knew that, in a fair race, he would not be anywhere near as fast as Harry's inhuman speed.
Thomas, meanwhile, was a little embarrassed about the faux pas, but otherwise only wished he could have used a more... satisfying spell against his older brother. That would have shown the arrogant bastard. Even so, the younger Potter was happy to have shown up Harry in front of the whole school.
Fleur... was more complicated. She, like Krum, had seen Harry on his regular runs; going at a speed the majority of wizards could only replicate if the devil was on their heels, and knew him to be the most likely winner of this race. She felt guilty about her effective backstab, but she would not have entered this contest if she didn't want to win. The French girl would apologise later, but she did not regret furthering her own cause in the heat of the moment.
Every 300 metres, there was a magical, or occasionally more mundane, obstacle; though the three did not know this for sure yet, since the first; a flock of... birds, was blocking their view of the rest of the course.
The cloud of avians; mismatched between hummingbirds, ravens, seagulls and starlings, stopped each competitor roughly 20 metres away, as they waited for one of the others to risk getting attacked by Merlin knows how many birds. Krum, arriving neck-to-neck with Fleur realised, upon seeing Thomas stop beside them, that it would not do to hesitate, and raised his wand again; charging forwards.
"Reducto!" Victor barked, as he grew near to the cloud of birds. This blew a hole in the defences briefly, and he sprinted through. When he came out the other side, the crowd saw that the spell had been effective, to an extent. He had few enough cuts that, it was clear he had avoided most of the birds, and that they had swarmed him only after recovering from the sudden shock.
Fleur followed next, conjuring a cloak that she wrapped around her body after casting several Impervius charms on the material. She, too, ran through. The birds, however, were smarter than typical. Upon exiting, it was clear that they had snatched the cloak from the Beauxbatons student, leaving her defenceless. She was slightly worse for wear than Krum.
"Incendio!" Thomas followed the other two, and barrelled ahead. He was attacked by flaming birds.
As Fleur exited the bird-obstacle, she found herself face to face with a trio of Rottweilers; each growling menacingly at her. Krum was running ahead, having just transfigured them. The girl raised her wand, and began casting.
"Stupefy!" The red bolt struck the first dog, and knocked it out immediately, as the other two lunged at her. "Impedimenta!" For the next beast, the Delacour girl hit it with the impeding jinx, and the dog, rather comically, fell flat on its face, knocking itself groggy. As she did this, the third and final dog got in jumping distance, and leapt at its enemy. Panicked, Fleur let out a quick cry of "Depulso!" and the creature flew back, landing in the dirt with a thump and a whimper. The blonde girl took off at a run again, in pursuit of her Durmstrang opponent.
The groggy dog Fleur had left behind struggled back to its feet just as the chubby champion managed to struggle through the cloud of birds; those on fire having faded away. Thomas Potter was not having a good day.
The second obstacle was of the muggle variety. There was a pair of wooden blocks, each four feet high and as long as the course was wide, with a metre and a half gap filled with mud between the two. Evidently, the champions were meant to jump it.
As Krum reached it, he stopped to get a feel for the gap, and conjured a plank of wood. It was 6 feet long and, soon enough, he had levitated it to fit over the gap well enough to cross. Climbing on to the nearer block, Krum began; not taking Fleur's position in to account.
As the ragged beauty neared, she saw what Krum was attempting and, with a sinister smirk, saw the perfect opportunity to get him back for his Rottweiler stunt.
"Bombarda!" The spell made contact with the centre of the plank, and the Quiddich player fell in to the pool of muck. Muck that, as it so happened, was ultra-fast drying. It would hinder him as the mud dried; caking his body. Krum clambered out of the other side of the pit after falling in, while Fleur summoned her own makeshift bridge.
The two reached the third obstacle by the time Thomas reached the mud-pit, tiredly climbed over the wooden block; mistaking that for the entirety of the obstacle, and fell face first in to the sludge.
It was as Fleur and Krum reached the third of five that Harry managed to twist his body enough to have one of his hands facing away from himself. It would be a bad move to cut himself open trying to escape these bloody bindings, after all. He sent a low powered cutting curse through the ropes, in order to weaken them enough that, with his own strength, he could free up one of his arms, and reached blindly for his fallen wand.
Fleur and Krum did not make the connection between the distance of separating the previous obstacles being 300 metres, and the blank space in front of each other as they were running; Krum slowly pulling ahead.
This just meant that the pit got Victor before Fleur. The illusion covering the 6 foot wide, 15 foot drop blinked away as Krum was on top of it, and the Durmstrang student swore in his native tongue as he fell. It was unfortunate that Fleur did not have time to stop herself, having been pushing herself to her highest speeds in an attempt to catch the first place Champion. The French girl just let out a surprised yell, as she followed Krum in to the trap.
"Diffindo!" Harry freed himself, and, understandably aggravated, began the course at a sprint.
As the black haired Hogwarts' student neared the first obstacle, seeing the swarm of birds and weighing the risks, the crowd was surprised to see that he did not stop; instead charging straight ahead. With two waves of his wand, Harry produced a smokescreen that engulfed the avians and, then, a gunshot rang through the course as he sent the birds in to a confused frenzy; each attempting to flee the odd sensations only to be stopped by the charms holding them in formation. This, luckily, created a small gap through which a human male could, just about, fit; as was shown by Harry sliding through and suffering only the most minor of injuries.
Accelerating back to his sprinting pace, Harry reached the mud pit and the walls surrounding it and, unlike his opponents, the animagus in human form leapt, placing his foot on the first wooden block, and vaulted the second; only taking the time to note that his little brother was clawing his way out of the muck as he landed in a roll. He left a patch of ice on the ground to hinder Thomas, and amuse him, further. Harry's fortune took a turn for the better, as he caught a glimpse of Krum climbing from the hole he had been caught in; giving the opponent they had ganged up on the warning that Krum and Fleur had not been afforded.
Harry guessed that he was running about twice the speed that Krum was by the time he had recovered from falling in to the pit; followed closely by Fleur as both clambered out of the rocky hole. It was inevitable the Harry would catch the pair, and he was not in a very forgiving mood.
Once again avoiding the obstacle with a leap rivalling Olympic athletes; assisted by a jinx to make the floor immediately before the pit as bouncy as a trampoline, the Hogwarts champion rolled, before smoothly righting himself, and began his pursuit of Krum and Fleur. Nearing the two, he raised his wand, and turned it on Krum first.
"Obscuro!" The Quiddich player panicked as his eyes were covered by a blindfold, and tripped over his own feet. Harry followed up with a flick of his wand while thinking Levicorpus; a spell he'd observed from his godfather as a child. The Bulgarian was tugged in to mid-air by his ankle, and left; dangling and blind.
Fleur, noticing this commotion, twisted to attempt to get the better of Harry, and was hit by an Expelliarmus, followed up by a Leg-locking curse. Harry, kindly, left her trying to crawl to where her wand had fallen.
The next test was another quite clearly based on a muggle obstacle course. It was an oiled up climbing wall with a rope hanging down the centre. Harry didn't feel like climbing it.
"Reducto!" The wall was blasted apart, and Harry wouldn't have been slowed down at all, if he had not taken the time to cast a Reparo; not wanting to make the challenge any easier for his opponents.
The last obstacle was an amusing idea; the judges had set up an illusion to make the champions believe they had reached the finish line, but hadn't been executed properly. They had put up a particularly complex spell lest the task drag on as the first place competitor just stood there for an hour or more. The spell only fooled the sense of sight and, beneath this layer of magic, there was nought but a plain dirt track just as there had been throughout the race. Harry's superior senses quickly told him that this was the case, and the black haired champion charged straight ahead. It would have been more entertaining, for him at least, if they'd had Flitwick put up the charms; or had an illusion of another dragon. That wouldn't have fooled him, but it would have been funny to see his brother's reaction.
Harry covered the remaining 300 metres, for Bagman had apparently lied to make this last obstacle convincing, in a predictably quick time. He turned to observe what he could of the other three's progress. A few minutes later, Fleur had obviously managed to retrieve her wand and reach the climbing wall. She, unlike Harry, decided to follow the course of actions the officials had wanted, and Harry saw her pull herself over; dropping to the floor below nimbly before standing with a flourish of her wand. From the wand movements, Harry could guess what she had done, and was annoyed that he had not thought of it himself.
When Krum reached the fourth obstacle, he'd be hard pressed to climb up the very slippery surface. Far more than the muggle oil had achieved.
Harry was also slightly ashamed to admit how... interesting the sight of Fleur's light blue and, more importantly, drenched top was.
Seeing Harry standing 600 metres away from her, instead of at the 'finishing line' negated the illusion for Fleur; it seemed rather useless by this point, and was proven further when Krum, finally, pulled himself up the slimed wall by transfiguring some climbing spikes An angry expression deepened the Quiddich player's ever-present frown even further because he had spent five minutes, which was a long time in this particular contest, trying to undo the jinx Harry put on him, only to repeatedly fail to scale the wall he had then been faced with.
The Bulgarian champion was only slightly ahead of his chubby competitor, shamefully, and his mood was dark because of this. It wasn't helped by the fact that the mud from the second obstacle had crusted by this point, and his movements were more difficult than they had any right to be, and that he had only gained 5 points in this task; putting the Hogwarts champion annoyingly far ahead of him.
Harry laughed loudly when it became evident Thomas had fallen at one of the hurdles. He only wished that he was able to watch the boy's failure himself; instead, he'd have to rely on first-hand accounts to convey the younger Potter's humiliation.
Eh. Maybe Harry'd make him apologise to some more Slytherins, just so the day would feel complete.