Chapter 37: Six Will Enter
Albus Dumbledore was rather pleased that everything seemed to be going according to plan so far. Under the bright magically lit lights of the stadium, the champions had all raced into the maze and were off in search of the Cup. Not a single Death Eater had attempted to come inside for the Task, not even the 'suspected' ones.
Yes, all was going very well.
Until—
"Professor," panted a second year Hufflepuff, Lily Potter's daughter, Clara. "I have to talk to you."
Her two friends, with whom she seemed completely inseparable, tore up behind her.
"Miss Potter, what are you doing on the pitch?" Dumbledore said, not unkindly. "It is for champions and staff only." Potter's gaze flicked across the green towards Alastor Moody.
"It's important, sir," Potter said. Her friends, Vane and Easton, nodded hard.
Dumbledore examined her face, so filled with earnestness and an unreadable fear. "Very well," he said.
"Sir, you need to call off the—"
"Potter!" growled Alastor Moody, approaching. "How's my favorite student?"
Instead of looking puzzled as Dumbledore had often noticed the girl behaving when Alastor favored her this way in the Great Hall before meals, she seemed to quiver, though Dumbledore might not have noticed it if he wasn't something of a good face-reader.
"I'm fine, sir," Potter said. "I was just talking to Professor Dumbledore." Her tone delicately suggested he should go away, but Alastor did not take the hint.
"Talk away, then, Potter, talk away," Alastor said, and there was a bit of a challenging note to his tone.
Potter looked between them a moment and then visibly wilted. "Never mind, Professor," she said, barely sparing Dumbledore another glance before leading her two friends away, back outside the pitch into the growing darkness.
Dumbledore gazed after her for a moment and then dismissed the encounter as odd but not particularly worrisome.
It was, unfortunately, one of those rare moments when Albus Dumbledore was dead wrong.
Clara, Romilda, and Derek huddled in the shadows of the Quidditch stands.
"That went well," Romilda muttered dryly.
"Crouch isn't going to let us alone for a moment with Dumbledore," Derek said, shooting a glare at the man who appeared to be Alastor Moody. "He must have seen us looking at him like we did, all mistrustful-like. What are we going to do?"
There were several heartbeats of silence.
Romilda and Derek blinked at Clara.
"You're asking me?" Clara said, appalled.
As one, her friends nodded.
"Why?"
Again in unison, as though they had planned it, Derek and Romilda shrugged.
"But I don't know," Clara objected, aghast. "I don't even know why Crouch would do this. I thought he was a straight-laced Ministry guy."
"He probably went under when the Ministry did," Romilda said, lowering her voice even further from the hushed tones they'd been using. "But that's not the point now. Point is, what are we going to do?"
"Only one thing to do, isn't it?" Clara said after a moment. "We've got to stop Ced—the champions," she corrected herself, "from touching that Cup. It must have some kind of curse on it; it's the only important thing our 'Moody' had access to tonight."
Her friends nodded.
"Right," Clara said, setting her jaw. "I'm going into the maze. You two—"
"Hold your hippogriffs right there," Romilda interrupted hotly. "You're going into the maze? You mean we're going into the maze."
"No," Clara said, "it's too dangerous, I can't let you—"
"It's not a matter of letting us," Derek said, the bits of his face that weren't in shadow looking very pale indeed. "We're coming with you."
"This is stupid," Clara said angrily. "I can't let you two get hurt—"
"Right, because it wouldn't hurt at all if our best friend died in there because she didn't have any back up," Romilda said snidely.
"You're not leaving us behind, Clara," Derek said seriously. Clara couldn't see to tell, but she knew his jaw was set in determination.
For an instant, she flashed back to Derek's angry face when he'd pulled her out of the Vanishing stair that night so many months ago, when she had left him behind.
"Fine," she said, and took off toward the castle.
"Where are you going?" Romilda asked irritably. "Maze's that way." She pointed inside the stadium.
Clara laughed humorlessly. "You think they're going to just let us waltz into the maze?" she said. "I'm getting the Cloak."
It was a slightly tighter fit than it had been last year to get the Invisibility Cloak to completely cover them, but they managed. It was easier than any of them expected to sneak across the open lawn and into the entrance of the maze, but apparently the judges had decided that no one sane would leave the stands, where there was warmth and house-elves everywhere carrying trays of butterbeer and freshly popped corn for the dreary, chilly, and dangerous maze.
Clara snorted as they rounded the first turn, hiding them from sight. She drew off the Cloak with a flourish. "We're mental," she announced to her friends softly.
Both of them shrugged. "This is news since...?" Romilda began sarcastically, and trailed off pointedly.
"So, what's the plan?" Derek interrupted before Clara could retort.
Romilda and Derek looked at Clara.
"Why d'you want me to come up with the plan?" Clara demanded, disgruntled.
"This was your idea," Derek pointed out.
"Because you made me come up with an idea in the first place!" Clara said.
Her friends exchanged a glance.
"You're our leader, Clara," Romilda said seriously.
Clara spluttered. "That's ridiculous," she said.
"What's ridiculous is us standing here, waiting for whatever's in the maze to come and get us," Derek said, quirking an eyebrow significantly.
Clara glanced at the Map, wishing beyond all hell that it showed the walls of the maze, so that getting through it would be as simple as navigating a paper maze. Unfortunately, the Map did not seem to recognize the hedges as being walls of Hogwarts.
"Well, we could try to get to each of the champions and convince them not to touch the Cup," Clara said doubtfully, looking at the way the three champions were spread out around the maze. "But that would take a while. Plus, this maze seems to be bigger on the inside than it was on the outside."
"We might not be able to get to them all before one of them gets to the middle of the maze," Derek pointed out.
"Our best bet might be to try to find the Cup in the middle," Clara said. "And stop whoever arrives from touching it."
"Yeah," Romilda said. "Let's do that; it seems most practical. And then, if we happen to run into one of the champions, we can try to convince them that way."
Clara nodded. It was decided. She looked up and down the long tunnel of hedge they were in. "Which way, d'you think?" she asked.
A roar sounded from one direction, sounding much too close for comfort.
"That way," Derek said, pointing away from the noise, and, in complete agreement, the three second year students raced away from whatever creature it was that only the best of adult students would be expected to face.
They were running quickly—therefore, when Clara, in the lead, tripped over something long and lithe, it was quite a spectacular sight.
She fell head over heels, flew a few feet though the air, landed on her stomach and bashed her chin so hard against the ground that she saw stars.
A great hissing sounded through the air as a huge snake reared up, easily six or seven feet long. But none of the children were looking at its body: they were a bit preoccupied with its heads, of which there seemed to be three.
All of the snake's heads focused on Clara, who had disturbed its daydreaming.
Romilda and Derek were behind it.
Clara stood in front, frozen in fear. Only the head on the right seemed to be hissing. The one on the left was looking at her with a calculating look in its eye, and the one in the center seemed unfocused.
"It's a Runespoor," Romilda whispered from behind the snake.
"Good to know the name of something that's about to eat you," Clara said out of the corner of her mouth. "How do you kill it?"
"You don't," Romilda said. "The only way it doesn't eat you is if you speak Parseltongue."
"I'm going to need a Plan B," Clara said, her voice quivering.
The snake jerked angrily, and Clara stopped talking at once, but its anger did not seem to be directed at her. The two heads on the left snapped at the right head warningly.
Clara wondered what the hissing right head was saying to the other two. The left head was no longer focused on Clara, but on the right head, and the middle one seemed to draw itself in from somewhere far away to also focus on the right head.
Suddenly, the snake lunged, not for Clara as she had expected, but two heads attacking the right one. The snake writhed on the ground.
"That's not something you see every day," Derek said as he and Romilda carefully edged around the self-mutilating snake.
"Let's go before they...finish," Clara said, staring at the unpleasant sight of a snake tearing off one of its own heads.
The trio set off again, this time more cautiously.
"Think everything we meet will attack itself?" Romilda asked cheerfully. "It'd sure save us a hell of a lot of work."
Clara grinned, her grip tightening around her wand as she peered around a corner. "Uh oh," she said.
"Don't say that!" Derek said, clearly nervous but trying to hide it. "Don't ever say 'Uh oh.' What is it?"
They had come to their first real intersection of tunnels, branching off in three different directions, excluding the way they had come.
"Which way?" Romilda asked, peering down the one on their right.
Clara examined the Map. "This is no help," she said disgustedly. "It can't tell which direction we're facing." She tucked it in a pocket.
"Eeny, meeny, miney, moe—" Romilda began, counting off, and then interrupted herself. "Hey!" she said suddenly.
"Yes?" Clara asked.
"Three different ways to go," Romilda said. She pointed them each out as though Clara and Derek didn't know what she was talking about. "Three of us."
"No," Derek said immediately.
"Come on," Romilda said. "It's a much better chance that one of us will find the Cup or one of the champions if we split up."
"And a much better chance we'll all die," Clara said as though explaining this to a small child.
"Oh, please," Romilda said, waving an airy hand. "That's likely anyway, isn't it?"
Derek shook his head. "I've seen this scene in the horror movie," he said. "It doesn't end well for us."
"What's a horror movie?" Romilda asked curiously.
Clara stamped her foot. "We're wasting time," she said angrily.
"Which is why we should split up, to save time," Romilda said as though this should be obvious.
Clara grabbed her friends by the arms so that they stood in a rough triangle. "We're not splitting up, got it?" she said. "If you're going to look at me when there's a decision to be made, then I get veto power over your stupid ideas."
Romilda bristled. "I'm not stupid—" she began.
"MERLIN'S PANTS, I AM NOT LOSING YOU TWO!" Clara shouted. Her yell echoed slightly in the silence of the maze and then faded to nothing.
Romilda and Derek stared at her with wide eyes.
"Now let's go, before everything that just heard me scream comes to eat us alive," Clara said, and hung a right quickly, hiding her face from them so they wouldn't see her blushing.
They hurried along the chosen path.
"I've seen people like you, but I had to pay admission," said a strange voice. Clara whirled.
"Which of you said that?" she asked.
"You do realize makeup isn't going to fix your stupidity?" said the voice again.
Romilda frowned, touching the light makeup she wore on her face. "That wasn't you, was it?" she queried of Derek, for the voice was certainly male.
"No," Derek defended.
"Ordinary people live and learn. You just live. Maybe you should stop."
"What the—Lumos!" Clara said, and spun in a slow circle searching for the source of the voice.
"I don't know what makes you so stupid, but it really works!"
"Lumos," Derek said, similarly searching for the source of the voice.
"You smell like Flobberworm mucus," said the voice derisively.
They had come to another intersection.
"You're a cowardly blubber-butt," the voice said.
"Don't call us cowards," Romilda growled, a nerve struck.
"Where is this coming from?" Clara said, frustrated, as she searched with her wandlight. "Cedric? Krum?" No one answered.
"Coward."
Romilda ground her teeth.
"Fraidy-Kneazle. Poltroon. Baby."
"Stop that," Romilda snarled.
The voice was getting farther away down one of the tunnels of the branch.
Clara breathed a sigh of relief. "Let's just go this way," she said, pointing the opposite way.
"Jellyfish. Gutless lily-liver."
Romilda growled, her wand leapt to her hand and she raced down the tunnel after the voice.
"Romilda!" cried Clara and Derek as one, tearing after her.
"Come back here, you sneaky, name-calling bas—" Romilda's words cut off abruptly as she screamed.
"ROMILDA!" Derek and Clara shouted again, putting on another burst of speed. Romilda was nowhere in sight.
"STOP!" shouted Romilda's voice from right in front of them. Clara froze, looked down, and grabbed Derek to stop him from toppling down into a very handy hole right in between the hedges.
"Romilda?" Clara gasped, her heart beating fast, and she aimed her wandlight down into the hole. "You down there?"
"Yeah," floated Romilda's voice, sounding twisted in pain.
"You okay?" Derek asked, similarly winded.
A moment of hesitation. "Yeah," Romilda said. "Only I think I've sprained my ankle."
"Anything dangerous down there?" Clara asked.
Romilda swore, and there was the sound of a muttered, "Lumos." There was a moment of silence. "No, I don't think so," Romilda said.
"Probably put here so that whatever that insulting thing was could lead you into it," Derek suggested.
Romilda groaned. "In other words, I played straight into their hands."
Clara and Derek had the decency not to answer this.
"How are we going to get her out?" Derek muttered to Clara.
"Um, you guys?" Romilda called. "Don't talk quietly about me up there where I can't hear you. It makes me nervous."
"Sorry," Derek said, clearly annoyed. "HOW ARE WE GOING TO GET HER OUT?"
"Derek, shut up," Clara said automatically. She hefted her wand.
"What're you doing?" Romilda asked quickly.
"Trying something," Clara said. "Wingardium Leviosa!"
"Trying whaaaaaaaaaa-?" Romilda's voice slipped up into a squeal as she rose from the ground. She rose slowly until she reached ground level, where Derek grabbed her and pulled her onto solid ground. She looked reproachfully at Clara. "I did not like that at all."
"Well, you're up here, aren't you?" Clara said.
Romilda, still holding onto Derek, put her left foot gingerly on the ground. "Ow ow ow ow," she said and lifted it again. Catching her friends' concerned gazes, she morphed her face from pain into what she must think it ordinarily looked like and said, "I mean, it's all good. See?" She put her foot down again, this time leaning weight on it and it collapsed beneath her.
Romilda tumbled to the ground, her black curls splayed out on the grass. "Ow," she said, muffled, into the ground.
Derek knelt beside her. "Are you all right?" he asked, anxious.
Romilda hefted herself up into a sitting position. "I'm fine," she said, and lifted her robe to inspect the damage.
Derek put his wandlight closer. "Romilda, this is definitely broken," he said.
"Brilliant," Romilda said. "Can you bandage it up?"
"I don't think you should—"
"Can you?"
Derek tapped her ankle and said, "Ferula." Bandages spun around Romilda's ankle loosely.
"Going to have to be tighter than that," Romilda said.
"This is a fourth year spell," Derek snapped. "I'm not any good at it."
"Just try again," Clara said, glancing at her watch and promptly hating herself for it.
"No," Romilda said suddenly. "Go."
"What?" Derek said, aghast.
"Leave me here," Romilda said, ignoring her friends' cries. "Even if you get this bandaged up, I'm not going to be able to run fast enough to get to the middle in time."
"Romilda, no, we're not splitting up," Derek said.
"Stop trying to be all noble and stuff," Romilda said. She tweaked his nose. "It doesn't become you."
"We'll send up sparks—" Clara began.
"If you do that, we'll all be dragged out of the maze and the Task will go on as planned," Romilda said beseechingly. "Clara, please—go."
Clara shook her head. "I can't leave you," she said. "What if something happens-?"
"Then something happens," Romilda said. "Look, if I think I'm going to die, I'll send up sparks, and someone will come save me. Of course, with my luck, it'll be Moody or Crouch or whoever, and I'll die anyway, but—"
"Stop it," Derek said, aghast. "Stop being the martyr, Romilda. It doesn't become you."
"Don't spit my own words back at me," Romilda argued. "Just because you—"
"Shut it," Clara said, just loud enough to cut them off. She glanced at her watch again. Over forty-five minutes had gone by since the Task had begun, and they were barely even started. "I'm going on. You two stay here, together, and keep each other safe."
"No," Romilda said. "Take Derek with you. You need him more than I do."
"I'm not leaving you defenseless," Clara argued. "You keep him."
"I'm not defenseless," Romilda said, and proffered her wand. "I've got this and all my fabulous second-year spells. If something tries to kill me I'll kill it with my very powerful offensive spell: Alohamora."
Derek let out a strangled laugh, but Clara only felt more appalled.
"Take Derek with you," Romilda said. "I'm armed, and I've got all the 'constant vigilance' I spent a year's worth of Defense classes learning, from, apparently, a total psycho, but what's the difference?"
"I'm leaving him."
"Take him."
"No."
"Yes."
"Excuse me," Derek interrupted politely. "Could I maybe have a say in this?"
The girls looked at him.
"I'm going with Clara," Derek said, "because she's probably going to get herself in more trouble by moving around than you will by standing still, Romilda."
Romilda nodded, satisfied. "See?" she said to Clara.
Clara glowered. "I hate you both."
"We know," Romilda said cheerfully, and leaned backwards against the hedge, her face taut with pain. "Go fight evil."
"Will do," Clara said, offering her friend only the faintest of smiles.
Derek pointed a finger solemnly at Romilda. "If you die, I'll kill you," he said.
Romilda nodded just as seriously. "Duly noted," she said.
The hedges seemed to be getting taller as Derek and Clara went through them towards the center of the maze. They loomed over Clara, and she shivered, raising her face towards the clean open sky, wishing she could grab her Firebolt and take to the sky, never to be surrounded by walls ever again.
The ran mostly in silence, their conversations reduced to the necessary ones at intersections, when one or the other or them would say, "Left?" or "Right?"
And the other would shrug and reply, "Sure."
Clara felt sure that Derek was gripped just as she was by the strong hand of guilt wrapped around her throat at leaving an injured Romilda and terror for her safety.
They fought their way through a band of particularly aggressive pixies and waded through a pool filled with grindylows that had attempted to drown them.
"I wonder if Moony had a hand in deciding some of the creatures for this maze," Clara said, almost to herself. She lifted one ankle and hopped along, trying to inspect it for the damage that the grindylows had done.
Derek jumped at her voice, one hand nursing the scratch he had up his face from the pixie attack. "What?" he said, his voice sounding unnaturally loud in the growing eeriness of the maze.
"He's good with magical creatures and such," Clara said, shrugging.
"Is that how you knew to use that spell on the grindylows?" Derek asked.
"Relashio?" Clara said. "Yeah."
There was a minute of silence as the pair jogged on. The mist seemed to be growing thicker. Clara shivered. She wondered if there was a dementor nearby, or if this was just magically created for the ambience of it all. If so, Clara thought she could have done without.
This was terrifying enough as it was.
"Romilda's good with magical creatures," Derek said as if to himself. Clara lifted her eyebrows delicately.
The mist was getting thicker, so she almost didn't notice the slight discoloration of what she and Derek were about to walk into. "Derek, stop!" she cried as loudly as she dared, but it was too late.
Derek's forward momentum carried him forward into the discolored mist, and he froze completely in terror.
"What is it?" Clara demanded of him, her wand clenched in her fingers. "What's it do?"
Derek let out a little squeak. His eyes, what Clara could see of them, seemed to be glazed over in fear, and his face was getting redder by the moment.
"What is it?" Clara demanded in near hysteria. The mist had a gold tinge to it.
"H-high—" Derek stuttered through chattering teeth.
"What?" Clara said. She prepared to charge into the mist and pull him out of it.
"N-no," Derek said. "Please, no."
"Derek, Merlin take it all, talk to me!" Clara said in exasperation.
When she received no response, Clara gathered her courage and stepped into the Mist. It didn't seem to be killing Derek. Not quickly, anyway. Clara pushed that thought from her mind as her foot landed on the ground within the mist.
But no, her foot did not land on the floor, it landed on the ceiling, which she seemed to be hanging from, the sky a great nothingness below her. Clara's heart practically flew out of her chest and she suddenly understood Derek's paralysis.
Clara could feel the blood rushing to her head. "Derek, I know what this is," she said urgently. "It's called Limbo Mist, it flips your sense of gravity, we just have to get through it and it'll go back to normal—"
"No," Derek whispered, and now that she was closer Clara could see the overwhelming fear in his eyes clearly.
Clara would have hit herself around the head if she wasn't afraid she'd pass out. Derek was afraid of heights. He hated flying. And now here he was, hung above a great wide nothing, the longest fall possibly imaginable.
"Derek, we won't fall," Clara said, wishing she weren't trying (at least a little) to convince herself of this, too. "It'll be okay, come on."
"Clara, no, please," Derek said. "I'll fall." His voice was like a child's, timid and unsure, a way that Clara was unused to hearing it. It scared her more than the feeling that she might pass out at any moment from the blood rushing to her head. She took a lurching step forward, ignoring the voice in the back of her mind that told her she was going to fall and keep falling, and nothing would stop her until she fell into the very depths of space—She gripped Derek's hand tightly.
"Come," she said simply, and she tugged on his hand. She went in front of him.
Derek followed her blindly, his eyes tightly shut, a pale sweat on his face.
Ten wrenchingly slow steps later, the pair collapsed on the other side of the Golden Mist.
Derek curled up on his side, hiding his face from view. "What was that?" he asked softly.
"Limbo Mist," Clara answered, panting slightly, though not from exertion exactly. She had moved much slower in the last few minutes—had it only been minutes? It felt like hours—than she had when they had been running through the maze. "It's a potion-spell combination. The mist is made in liquid form as a potion and then hung in the air with a spell."
"What happens if you drink it?" Derek asked. "The potion, I mean."
"Your gravity gets reversed forever," Clara said reluctantly, and Derek shivered. She laid a hand on his shoulder. "Let's just stay here a moment and catch our breath—"
BANG.
Alas, it seemed not to be.
Clara looked up slowly. Please let it be a friendly puppy, she thought whimsically to herself. A puppy with big brown eyes and floppy ears and—
Clara cursed.
It was not a puppy.
Derek was looking at it, too. "What is that?" he asked softly.
"I have no idea," Clara said honestly.
It seemed to be scorpion-like in shape, but was majorly oversized. The banging sound seemed to have come from its end, which seemed to be smoking. Its other end bore a long, sharp stinger that was practically screaming 'poison.'
"Hagrid, you think?" Derek asked out of the corner of his mouth.
"Oh, yep," Clara answered resignedly, trying not to imagine what sort of creatures Hagrid had crossed to achieve the odd-looking terror. "What d'you reckon?"
"Well, we can't run," Derek said, glancing at the Limbo Mist behind them.
Clara shook her head. "I meant what sort of spells do you think we ought to use against it?"
Derek paused and then swore as the creature came closer. "Alohamora?" he suggested.
"Nice try, but you're not Romilda," Clara said, her wand pointed at the creature. Its armor clacked menacingly. "Stupefy!"
There was no effect.
"Have you ever tried that spell before?" Derek asked nervously.
"That'd be the first," Clara answered him grimly.
Derek's wand hand shook as the creature advanced. "P-petrificus totalus!" he stammered. A weak beam of light shot from his wand and encased the strange creature. It seemed to freeze for a moment, but then advanced again.
"We're trying too difficult of spells!" Clara said to Derek. "We need to cast powerfully! Spells we know!"
"Like what?" Derek demanded.
"Like..." Clara hesitated.
"CLARA!" Derek screamed at her as the creatures turned its backside on them and fired off a ball of fire.
"Rictusempra!" Clara shouted. The creature began to convulse, rolling around on the ground and releasing fireballs at random, firing them over and around the children's heads.
"Get down!" Derek yelled at her and he tackled her to the ground as a fireball shot over them. "Take it off! Take it off!"
"Finite!" Clara cried from the ground, only just getting her wand around in time for the spell to hit the oversized fiery lobster instead of the hedge. The scorpion-thing stopped convulsing and advanced on them, clearly enraged by Clara's powerful tickling spell.
"Reducio!" Derek shouted, pointing his wand at the scorpion. It shrunk slightly, now hovering only a head above Derek and Clara.
"Good one," Clara said. An idea sprung to mind. "Locomotor!" she cried, and the scorpion lifted into the air. Concentrating, Clara directed it to one side of the tunnel. With its newly diminished size, it would allow one person to run through the revealed space. "Derek, go!" she yelled.
Derek didn't hesitate. He raced through the crack, passing right by the scorpion's fire-blasting end, but he was going to get through—
BANG!
Derek fell to the grass, clutching the side of his face with both hands. His scream ripped through Clara and her concentration ended. The Locomotor spell ended and the creature fell to the ground right next to Derek.
"DEREK!" Clara screamed, and started to run towards him.
"Impedimenta!" shouted a gruff voice from beyond the scorpion, and Clara found it suddenly difficult to move. The voice repeated the spell and the scorpion-looking thing also seemed to freeze, no longer scuttling nastily toward Derek, ready to make him its meal. "Stupefy!"
There was the sound of an angry curse as the spell rebounded.
"Confringo!" shouted the voice, and with the sound of an explosion, the huge fiery scorpion flew backwards into the Limbo Mist. Clara threw herself to the ground again to avoid its flight path, or tried to, but her movements were sluggish from the spell and she was going to be hit—
"Accio," the voice said again, and she found herself moving forward speedily until she crashed into her savior.
"Krum!" she said in shock.
"Miss Potter," he greeted her, lifting the Impediment Curse with a wave of his wand. "Vot are you doing in the maze?"
Clara gaped at him wordlessly for a moment.
"Who is your friend?" he asked, turning to look at Derek, who lay writhing on the ground.
Clara gasped, wrenched back to reality, and raced to his side.
"Shh, it's okay," she said, resting her hand gently on his side as he thrashed. His robes were still smoking from his shoulder up to his face, and an angry burn blossomed there. The severity of the burns was difficult to judge as he had his hands pressed to his cheek, but it looked bad. "It's okay. We'll get you fixed up. Derek, Derek. Shhh."
Derek continued to moan and writhe as though he could not hear her, his hands clutched to his face.
Krum was behind her, looking down at Derek. "He is your friend?" he asked.
"Yes, yes, he is," Clara said, nearing hysterics. "Can you help him?"
"Miss Potter, I do not vant to lose—" Krum began.
"Please," Clara begged.
Krum heaved a heavy sigh and knelt beside her. "Aguamenti," he muttered under his breath. Water flowed from his wand and drenched Derek's face and shoulder.
Derek hissed in pain but stopped moaning, and he stilled.
"There is not much that I vill be able to do," Krum said. "I am no Healer."
Clara felt her breath coming back as Derek quieted.
"Ferula," Krum murmured, and bandages affixed themselves to Derek's face. He stood and began to walk away. "Now, I haff to be getting on with the task. I vould encourage you to send up sparks and get out of this maze."
"No!" Clara cried, and she stood up, racing to get in front of him.
For the first time, Krum looked very menacing indeed. "No?" he repeated. "Vot do you mean by this 'no'?"
"No, you can't go on with the task," Clara said beseechingly. "I think something is wrong with the Cup."
Krum looked at her suspiciously."Vot could possibly be wrong with it?"
"I don't know!" Clara said. "Only please don't go on, please don't touch it. Send up sparks, get out of the maze—don't touch the Cup."
"And loose the honor of my school?" Krum said. "I think not, Miss Potter; get out of my way." His grip on his wand tightened.
"Please—" Clara started, trying to gather herself and realizing for the first time how stupid her story would sound. "Professor Moody, he's not Professor Moody, he's Crouch, and he's trying to sabotage the Cup—"
"I thought you were the decent sort of person, Miss Potter," Krum said, shaking his head angrily. "But you think only of yourself and your school and your champion. Vill Hogwarts really go to such lengths to win?"
"This isn't about winning!" Clara said, feeling hysteria rising up in her again. "This is about not dying!"
"Get out of my vay, Miss Potter, or I vill be forced to do something I may regret," Krum said menacingly.
Clara stood fast. "Please, Viktor, you have to believe me—"
Krum raised his wand.
"Stupefy!" said a voice Clara recognized, and she only just realized that it was not Krum's before a stream of red light hit the Bulgarian champion and he crumpled unconscious to the ground. She followed the stream back to Derek, lying on the ground with his wand raised weakly.
"What-?" Clara began and cut herself off, staring at her friend. "I didn't know you could Stun things."
"I didn't either," Derek said weakly, moving his lips as little as possible to avoid jostling the burns. "Turns out I can do lots of things when my friends are about to get killed."
"I don't think he would have killed me," Clara said, looking dubiously at Krum.
Derek raised his eyebrows and then flinched from the pain this caused. Clara rushed to his side. "Does it hurt terribly?" she asked.
Derek waved a hand. "I'm all right," he said. He half grinned at her, though it looked much more like a grimace.
Clara returned his grin nonetheless. "Well," she said. "Let's see if we can get you standing, okay?"
With a lot of help from Clara, Derek was able to shakily get to his feet, his wand gripped loosely in his hand.
"Maybe you should—"
"I'm not leaving you," Clara told him firmly.
Derek's lips twitched. Hi raised a hand to Clara's face and ran it down her cheek. Clara stared at him. "You're bleeding," he said by way of explanation, holding up his hand, now with her blood on it.
"Yeah, a bit," Clara said, touching the scratch on her face. "The pixies, remember?"
Derek nodded, grimacing.
"Anyway, I'm nowhere near as bad off as you," Clara said.
"Gee, thanks," Derek said morosely.
Clara was in no mood to banter. "Can you run?" she asked.
"Probably not, but I think I could manage walking," Derek said.
Clara nodded decisively. "Walking it is, then."
"What about him?" Derek asked, indicating Krum with his wand, a look of disgust on his face.
Clara bit her lip. "We can't just leave him. Something could eat him," she said.
"Fat loss that'd be," Derek muttered darkly.
"But if we get him rescued, he'll tell about us, and we'll be dragged out of the maze," Clara went on.
There was a moment of silence.
"Not if he doesn't remember what happened," Derek said.
"Don't be stupid, of course he'll remem—" Clara froze as she stopped herself. She stared at Derek. "Can you?"
"I read a book about it," Derek said. "I think so." He lifted his wand, then lowered it. "What if I do it wrong and I mess him up forever?"
Clara laid a hand on his uninjured arm. "Then we'll deal with it," she said, slipping her hand into his. "Together."
Derek nodded, his lips drawn in a thin line. He pointed his wand at Krum. "Obliviate," he said quietly. A stream of white light flew from Derek's wand into Krum.
"Did it work?" Clara breathed.
"I think so," Derek answered. "Maybe. I don't know. Maybe partially."
Without waiting another moment for Derek to dwell on what he'd done, Clara pointed her wand to the sky and fired off a shower of red sparks. "Run," she said to Derek and then rethought that. "Walk quickly," she amended, and the pair had rounded two corners before they heard the sounds of a rescue party collecting Krum.
They were going much slower than Clara would have liked, but she was not willing to leave Derek as she had Romilda and go on alone.
That thought was more frightening than any of the terrifying creatures and spells they had encountered thus far.
Romilda sat huddled against the chilly hedge, her wand clutched tightly in fingers white with tension and her eyes on high alert as she scanned the gathering darkness. She wished she dared to light her wand, but attracting more attention to herself just to make herself feel better didn't seem like the prudent thing to do at the time.
Unaware that at that precise moment one of her best friends was nearly getting his face burned off, Romilda shivered as night fell, wishing for a cloak. Her left hand sought her ankle once more, feeling it out. It had swollen more in the time since Clara and Derek had left her there by herself in the dark.
Romilda unraveled the loose bandage that Derek had made for her and rewrapped it by hand so that it was snug. She gently tested the weight of her leg on it as best she could without actually getting up.
"Ouch," she whispered softly, and removed the weight. Several nasty phrases ran through Romilda's mind, and a voice much like Derek's chased them out again.
"Darn you, Derek," Romilda said. "Now you've got me censoring my thoughts."
So far the only living thing that Romilda had seen since her friends had left was what seemed to be an ordinary bunny rabbit, though Romilda would have bet good Galleons that if she had somehow provoked it, it would have grown razor sharp teeth, expanded to twenty times its size, and attacked her.
Though that could have been her overactive imagination.
There was something about the gathering dark, Romilda decided, that made one's imagination run rampant.
Romilda snorted to herself. Apparently, it also makes one use the word 'one' when referring to oneself, she thought.
A scream shattered the dark.
It was female, but not Clara, Romilda registered immediately. Almost without knowing how, she was on her feet (or foot, as it were) and stared around wildly. If it was not Clara, and it was not Romilda herself, then by process of elimination the girl that screamed must have been Fleur Delacour.
Romilda had next to no recollection of interactions with the Delacour girl. If she was in distress, it might mean she would send up sparks and be taken out of the maze before she reached the Cup.
Romilda waited breathlessly, looking up at the sky, waiting for sparks.
A shower of red sparks flew up, but not from the direction that Romilda had thought the scream had come from. Still, she allowed herself to relax slightly. Fleur must be out of danger now.
The scream sounded again.
Romilda cursed aloud. "Damn Gryffindor hero complex," she muttered to herself. Clutching the hedge for support, she hopped along in the direction of the scream.
It was by a series of unlucky turns and then a series of lucky ones that Romilda wound up actually finding Fleur. She rounded the last corner and then immediately wished she hadn't.
But it was too late.
The Manticore looked up from where it was curled around Fleur's still body, crooning softly to her. Romilda froze in fear.
"Ah, a young one," the Manticore said from its humanlike mouth. She licked her lips delicately. "I thought there were only to be older ones in this maze for my prey?"
"I-I'm not supposed to b-be here," Romilda said, cursing herself for stuttering.
"Are you frightened, dearie?" the Manticore cooed. She was still curled around Fleur. "You are. And you're hurt. I could end that for you, if you like. It'll be quick and painless. Well...it'll be quick."
Romilda thought of Fleur's pain-filled screams and said, "No, thanks."
The Manticore looked disappointed. "Very well," she said. "Let me finish with this one and then I'll chase you." She turned back to Fleur.
"Is she dead?" Romilda blurted, pointing to Fleur.
"Very nearly," the Manticore said. She waved the stinger at the end of her tail menacingly. "My venom does its work quickly."
"Will she still be alive in a minute or two?" Romilda asked, gripping her wand.
The Manticore let out a guttural laugh. "You think to defeat me in a minute or two, dearie?" she asked. "Very well. Yes, she will."
"I don't intend to beat you," Romilda said. "I intend to let them do it." She raised her wand to the sky and released a stream of red sparks, which hovered over them.
The Manticore leapt to her feet, snarling in a very lion-ish way, a tribute to her midsection, which was that of a lion.
Romilda whirled on her one foot and used the hedge to drag herself away. The Manticore leapt after her and then turned back to guard her prey, unsure which to keep, and in that moment her decision was made for her when a team of teachers and wizards from the Department of the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures showed up. Romilda pressed herself into the hedge and froze. The team gathered up Fleur, got rid of the Manticore, and left, and Romilda counted a slow twenty before letting her feet (or foot, as it were) fall out from underneath her and she sank to the ground, exhausted and terrified, wishing above anything else that she had her friends with her.
"Two champions out!" cried Bagman from his place at the announcers stand. "The only thing left between Hogwarts and victory is... Oh yes, a maze full of horrifying creatures and enchantments!"
The crowd groaned.
"But have no fear!" Bagman shouted. "If anyone can handle this little maze, it's our very own Diggory!"
Sirius lounged back in his seat. This wasn't a very exciting task to watch. He glanced over at Remus again, who had been looking at him anyway. Remus' fist flashed open, closed, open longer, closed, open—
Sirius made a soft noise as he realized. He translated Remus' Morse code to say, All right?
He interpreted the question mark.
Yes, he flashed back. Just want this to be over.
Me, too, Remus sent.
Sirius glanced around. You seen Clara? he asked with his hands.
Remus looked puzzled and scanned the stands. No, he sent. But we'll see her after.
An icy chill suddenly settled over the stands.
In the dimness of the maze, the bright light of the second fire of sparks lit up Clara and Derek's faces with spooky red light.
Clara and Derek looked at each other. One of Derek's hands went to his bandaged face. "You don't think..." he began, "Romilda?"
Clara realized she had been biting her lip only when she released it and tasted blood. "No," she said. She glanced at the sparks and followed the smoke trail down as far as she could see it. "We left Romilda closer to us than that."
"Are you sure?" Derek asked.
Clara swallowed dread in her throat. "Yeah," she said, wishing she were actually sure.
"Okay," Derek said, clearly not believing her. But there was nothing they could do short of running through the maze trying to find her, which seemed a stupid thing to do since the fact that sparks went up meant that the adults would be there within moments.
"If she did send up sparks, we have to go faster," Clara said. "Then they'll know we're in the maze."
"'Mil wouldn't tell them," Derek objected.
"They're not stupid, they'll figure it out," Clara retorted. She slid her arm under Derek's shoulders. "Let's go."
Derek cast another look backwards, and Clara felt her own mind and heart drifting back to the friend she had left behind, but she wrenched her thoughts back to the here and now. There would be time for regrets later. Now, she had to move forward.
There was a shadowy figure slowly approaching from in front of them, drifting closer and closer.
Clara hefted her wand with the hand that wasn't supporting Derek, and saw him do the same.
"What is that?" Clara asked. It seemed to only be a mass of darkness. Occasionally it seemed to take a shape—fire, a monster, a snake, a spider, even occasionally the faces of people that Clara knew—but the shapes were gone too quickly for Clara to place them. Nonetheless, she felt an odd sort of foreboding.
Clara released Derek gently and advanced slightly in front of him. The mass paused in front of her and seemed to hesitate a moment.
Then, suddenly, with no warning at all, it rushed forward and encased her in its darkness, cutting off Derek's yell of shock.
Clara screamed and battered at the inside of the mass, which seemed to have become quite hard and unyielding. The mass shrank down around her, constricting her—only it didn't crush her, it trapped her in an ever shrinking space.
Clara knew dimly, somewhere deep inside, that her screams were irrational and her flailing about would help nothing, but this knowledge did not help her in the face of the completely blind terror that enveloped her mind.
She wasn't just in a small room where the walls seemed to cave in upon her, the walls were actually advancing, and she was going to die, she couldn't breathe, it was like when she'd been drowning, she couldn't inhale. There was air but she couldn't breathe it. Terror swamped her and took over her body as she screamed at the walls, throwing herself against them, howling like a caged animal, all thoughts of her mission completely abandoned as she surrendered to fear—
And then it was gone.
Clara lay whimpering on the ground, curled in the fetal position. The black mass was gone. Clara focused on her breath and on the wide sky above her, now beginning to be dotted with stars.
Star light, star bright, Clara thought as she shook like a leaf on the ground. First star I see tonight—
Then she heard Derek make a noise that sounded like a dog's whining, and she looked up. He was standing before her, staring down at the ground, not at her, but at the still body of—
"Romilda!" Clara gasped, staggering to her feet. Her friend's body lay mangled on the grass, her unseeing eyes staring up into the heavens. "No, please, it can't be—"
She stopped. It couldn't be. They had left Romilda behind ages ago.
Derek was staring, petrified, at Romilda's corpse—no, the apparition of Romilda's corpse, Clara corrected herself. He waved his wand blindly at it, and with a crack, it turned into three girls lying side by side, all looking very much dead. If Clara had been the sort to bet, she would have laid good Galleons on the probability of these girls being Derek's three younger sisters.
Clara tried not to look. It wouldn't do to have this image in her head the first time she met the real little girls.
"Derek," she began, whispering, but she had to stop at the look on his face. He was completely stricken, his face ashen with grief. Clara shook herself. "Derek, it's not real. It's not real, Derek."
But it was as real to him as the constricting darkness had been to her a moment before, realizing her worst fear—
And that was when Clara realized that the creature they faced had shown her the worst fear she had, and it was now doing the same for Derek. It was a creature that she had only ever heard about in Moony's bedtime stories, a creature of fear and darkness—a boggart.
"Derek, it's a boggart, it's showing you what you're afraid of—Derek!" Clara tugged on his arm. "We just have to get past it."
Tears were streaming down Derek's face now and he waved his wand again.
Another crack sounded and Clara found herself staring down at her own dead body, a thin stream of red blood trailing from her mouth and pooling in the grass.
"Lovely," she said disgustedly. She turned Derek's head so that he was forced to look into her eyes. "I'm right here, Derek, I'm safe. I'm here, I'm right here. I'm all right." She would have tried to convince him that Romilda and his sisters were just fine as well, but this was easier. She had living proof that she was alive; she was right there in front of him, breathing and well.
Derek seemed to stare past her for a moment before he made himself look into her eyes. "Clara?" he whispered.
Clara pulled him tightly into a hug, assuring him of her presence. "I'm here," she said again. "I'm safe. We both are."
Derek nodded slowly. "How do we get by?" he asked shakily.
"Close your eyes and run," Clara decided, and she gripped Derek's hand firmly. They closed their eyes and hobbled past Clara's dead body on the ground—a feeling which was most disconcerting indeed—to the clear area beyond.
Eyes closed, they promptly crashed into a hedge. Clara's eyes snapped open. "Uh, Derek?" she said.
"Hmm?" Derek asked, letting his eyes drift open.
"We've hit a dead end."
Derek snapped to full attention. "What?" he demanded. "That isn't possible."
"It's a maze," Clara said dully. "It's possible."
"But we can't go back through that thing," Derek said, glancing back at the boggart, which had become a mass of black smoke once more.
Clara shuddered. "What choice do we have?" she said.
"I can't do it again, Clara," Derek said, and he sank helplessly to the ground. "I can't face it."
"Are you joking?" Clara said. She knelt in front of him, and through more self-control than she thought she had she did not check her watch. "You faced it for me, didn't you? You saw it was destroying me, so you stepped in front of it. Saved me from it."
Derek looked up at her. "I don't want to face it again," he said softly in a voice that sounded like a young child's. "Please don't make me."
"I don't know what else to do!" Clara said helplessly. "Know what? You stay here, I'll go on."
"No," Derek said immediately. "I'm not making you do that—"
"No, you're not making me," Clara agreed. "I'm doing it of my own free will. We've got to be near to the center now. I'll go."
"But how are you going to get by it?" Derek asked.
Clara shook her head. "I don't know. But I've got to try." She stood up to go, wishing that she wasn't shaking so badly.
Suddenly, Derek was beside her, his hand in hers. "What if we don't?" he said.
"We've got to," Clara said, confused. "What d'you mean?"
Derek drew his wand and pointed it at the hedge. "Incendio," he said, and a tiny corner of the hedge burned away.
"Derek—" Clara began dubiously.
"Just help me!" Derek said. "Diffindo. Incendio!"
The hedge began to get a hole in it, bit by bit. Clara cast another glance down the hedge tunnel at the black mass, waiting menacingly for her. She added her own spells to Derek's. It seemed a long time later when the hedge had a hole in it that was just big enough for Clara and Derek to wiggle through one by one.
"I'll go first," Clara said, and knelt to crawl through the hole. The hedge was thick, and she had to worm through on her belly to make it through. She felt the hedge tearing her robes and ripping mercilessly through her skin, and it was small and made her feel claustrophobic. She wrenched herself through before the panic could set in, and then she sat, panting, in the adjacent leg of the maze.
Derek, behind her, began to worm his way through when it seemed the maze had enough of two twelve-year-olds getting around the system, and the branches began grow again, attempting to close the hole while Derek was still in it. Clara seized his arms and tried to pull him through, but the hole was already too small, and soon Derek was quite hopelessly trapped.
"Diffindo!" Clara cried, her wand pointed at the branches. "Incendio! Diffindo! Incendio! Incendio!"
"Easy with the fire spell, Clara," Derek said, wincing as she burned him by accident. He pushed at the branches. "They aren't budging."
"They have to!" Clara shouted. "Diffindo!"
"Stop, stop, stop!" Derek yelled, and Clara subsided. "It's no good, Clara, I'm stuck here. Go. Run. Now."
Clara shook her head, tears springing to her eyes. She couldn't leave him, she couldn't let him be alone and she couldn't go on alone either—
"It's not ideal, but it's the best we have," Derek said, strangely calm for one stuck in what was possibly a murderous hedge. "I can't get out, but someone has to warn whichever champion is left. Go, Clara. Run."
"I don't want—"
"You don't want to, but you know it's the only thing to do," Derek said. He looked very pale but also determined. "Run."
Clara stared at him, and she would have thrown her arms around him if the angle wouldn't have been so awkward. She settled for a sloppy kiss on his forehead and then she got up and took off down through the hedges.
"Clara!"
Clara hastened back to where Derek was. He must have reconsidered, she wouldn't have to leave him, they could stay together, it would be all right—
"I think you went the wrong way."
Clara swallowed as a numb feeling washed over her body. She nodded slowly and then took off at a run down the tunnel in the opposite direction.
Run, she told herself. Run.
She kept running, so fast she almost didn't see it in time to stop.
It was a large animal, like a huge cat, a lion, only it had the head of a beautiful Egyptian woman. She sat calmly on her haunches, watching Clara slow down and approach gingerly.
"You have no need of that," she said.
Clara followed the sphinx's gaze to her wand. "I think I'll hold on to it, anyway," she said.
"I mean you no harm," the sphinx said.
"Great, can I get past you, then?" Clara asked brightly.
The sphinx smiled softly. "No," she answered. "It is not so simple as that."
"Then what is it?" Clara asked, getting straight to the point.
"In a hurry, are we?" the sphinx asked.
Clara raised her eyebrows. "You expected someone to come through here who wasn't in a hurry?"
"Haste, haste, haste," the sphinx said. "What would our world be without haste? A much better place, would it not be?"
Clara shrugged.
"I will pose a riddle to you," the sphinx said. "If you get it right, I will let you past."
"And if I don't?"
"I will kill you."
Clara set her features so as not to betray fear. "Right," she said.
"Often talked of, never seen,
Ever coming, never been,
Daily looked for, never here,
Still approaching, coming near.
Thousands for its visit wait,
But alas for their fate.
Though they expect me to appear,
They will never find me here.
Who am I?"
Clara stared blankly at the sphinx. "That's the best you've got?" she asked.
The sphinx lifted an eyebrow. "Well, I did use my favorite riddle on the boy who already got through here."
"A boy got through?" Clara repeated. It had to be Cedric. It had to be. Cedric was closer to the cup than ever. "How close are we to the Cup?" she demanded breathlessly.
"Very close," the sphinx said. "If you are very lucky, I may be the last obstacle standing between you and the object of your desire."
"You've got to let me through," Clara said, feeling panic well up in her chest. "I've got to stop him!"
"I shall let you through," the sphinx said calmly. "When you have answered my riddle."
"You don't understand!" Clara shouted. "He could die! There's something wrong!"
"I care not for your petty human worries," the sphinx said, and she had the audacity to look amused at Clara's growing panic. "Answer the riddle, and I shall let you past. Do not answer, and you can walk away unscathed. Answer wrongly, I will attack. The choice is yours."
Clara felt her breath coming quickly, and her hand tightened on her wand.
"Whatever you are thinking of doing, do not," the sphinx said. "I am much faster than a puny little girl."
Clara stared at the sphinx. "Tell me the riddle again, quickly."
The sphinx calmly repeated the riddle. Clara mouthed the words after her carefully. "Could it be a monarch, perhaps?" she asked herself. "The queen? 'Thousands for its visit wait'—no. Its. Not her. It's at thing, not a person. Right?"
The sphinx raised an eyebrow.
"The thing that people are always looking forward to, but it never comes. That they talk about often, and look forward to daily...daily."
The answer was suddenly obvious.
"Tomorrow," she said with finality. "The answer is tomorrow, because people always look forward to tomorrow, but it never comes, because by the time it's tomorrow, it's today. Right?"
The sphinx smiled and stepped aside.
Clara spared barely a grin at her success before racing past the creature into the even darker hedges beyond. But no, not darker, because there was a flickering golden light just ahead of her.
Clara stopped in her tracks before a roaring fire.
She could see through it, beyond, to the retreating back of a tall figure. "CEDRIC!" she screamed, but the roaring of the flames before her swallowed her voice, and the smoke caught in her throat.
Beyond Cedric, she could see it, glimmering and shining in the moonlight: the Triwizard Cup.
"CEDRIC, STOP!" Clara screamed.
He didn't hear her. Clara stared at the flames before her. They were too thick to run through; she'd never make it all the way. There wasn't time to find another way. Cedric was going to touch the Cup.
The flames licked up the side of the hedges, and suddenly Clara flashed back to a History of Magic class, watching Derek making flames come to life in ink up the side of his parchment, bordering the only note he'd bothered to take: a memo on the Flame-Freezing Charm, with its incantation just beside it—
"Flamafrigus," Clara whispered, and without waiting to wonder if the spell had taken hold, she barreled through the flames. They were still hot, she realized dimly, but not a murderous heat. They might have burned her badly in she had stayed in the flames for a long time, but she was running too swiftly for that.
She was through, and running as fast as she could up the hedges, racing towards him.
"CEDRIC!" she screeched again, and this time he heard but he did not turn around. He was next to the Cup, he was reaching out a hand.
She wouldn't get there in time.
He was going to take it.
She would fail.
Clara reached out a hand to grab the back of Cedric's shirt and pull him forcefully away from the Cup.
Her hand wrapped firmly in his shirt just as Cedric gripped its handle.
There was a severe jerk behind Clara's navel as she was whirled away from the maze, and Hogwarts, and everything that was familiar.
(A/N) I know, two cliffhangers in a row. I'm the worst. Hopefully you will feel that is made up for by the fact that this chapter is both posted sooner than normal and longer than usual. This was the first place that seemed reasonable for me to cut it. And you all know the best way to let me know how much you want the next chapter!
The response on this fic has been amazing. Please keep it up!