Hermione took a step back, her wand still trained on Filch's unconscious body.

"Wand out, Ron," she said. He obeyed wordlessly, his mind no doubt running through the same questions that her own was. She was shaking slightly, but her wand hand held steady.

"Rennervate."

Filch began to stir almost immediately. His eyes opened a moment later, and one of her questions was immediately answered.

"He's been Imperiused," Ron muttered. Filch's eyes were cloudy and dull, and he blinked with a robotic precision. "He looks just like we all did, those times that Moody trained us to resist it."

Hermione's mind raced back to those classes. Moody had never mentioned a counter-curse, and unfortunately she was pretty sure that the assigned reading hadn't discussed one either. But there had to be a way.

"We need to break the curse," she said. "If he can tell us who cursed him, maybe we can stop them before…"

She trailed off, not wanting to think about it. She just had to stay calm and think this through.

"Finite Incantatem," she tried, but nothing happened. Filch still lay on the floor, motionless save for the slow rise and fall of his chest. Whoever had placed him under the curse must not have been paying attention to him, and whatever instructions he had been given hadn't included how to respond to a situation like this, which meant he was essentially paralyzed.

"I might have an idea," Ron said, walking over to the windows of the box. "But I don't think you're going to like it."

She joined him by the windows, being careful to keep Filch in her sight. "Why not?"

"It's something I overheard Dad saying once. It wasn't long after You-Know-Who was killed, and there were still all sorts of Death Eaters on the loose, acting in his name. I was too young at the time to understand it, and Mum whisked me off to my room when she realized I was listening to them."

She looked at him, puzzled. "What does that have to do with me not liking the idea?"

"I'm getting to that. Some of the Aurors were given the special power to kill, right? Mad-Eye was one of them; he might've filled half of the cells in Azkaban, but he filled even more coffins."

Hermione nodded.

"Anyway, the point is that the Killing Curse wasn't the only Unforgivable they were permitted to use. Dad was saying something about how the Aurors would be able to rescue more people from the Imperius Curse now that they were allowed to use it too."

"So you're saying that the Imperius Curse is its own counter-curse?"

"I don't know. That's not exactly what he said. But I guess so?"

"Great. I don't like it." Hermione began to pace, all too aware of the fact that every second they spent up here was a second that they weren't protecting Harry. "For one, it doesn't even make magical sense. And second, you're suggesting that we should use an Unforgivable. An Unforgivable. On the school caretaker, no less. This isn't like wandering the corridors at night, this is serious."

"I bloody well know it's serious," Ron snapped. "I'm not saying we should make him dance around like a puppet. I'm saying we should free him from somebody else's grip, and hope that what he can tell us will save Harry. That sounds pretty forgivable to me."

Hermione sighed. She returned to the window. They were well above the rest of the crowd, and everybody was looking down at the maze. They wouldn't be seen. Nobody would ever know.

"Is there really no other way?" she asked.

"Unless you've been holding out on me."

"I only wish." Then she turned, her wand pointed once again at Filch, wanting to act before she could think more about what she was doing.

"I'll do it if you want," Ron said quickly, as if he could sense the hesitation that she still felt. "It was my idea."

"It's ok," she said, shaking her head. She was the only person she trusted with this. And so she took a deep breath, steeling herself once more to face the unknown.

"Imperio."

A rush of pleasurable warmth flooded into her left hand, slowly trickling further and further up her arm and then swirling down to her stomach. It felt quite a bit like how others had described drinking Firewhisky, right down to the coursing feeling of courage and power. She realized that at the very origin of that feeling, in the palm of her hand, it felt as though she was holding something. It was soft, and she had the sense that, were she to squeeze it tightly, it might burst. She could sense that there was another hand holding it too, and on some instinctive level Hermione knew what she had to do. Slowly, gently, she concentrated and willed one of the other hand's fingers away from the object.

Filch's torso jerked up suddenly, as if he had been stuck with a needle in the back.

It was fortunate that the grip of the other hand on Filch's mind seemed quite loose, and its owner was inattentive, but even still Hermione had to strain to pull away the next two fingers.

Filch's limbs were set into motion, pushing him around on the floor like a fish flopping on a dock, forcibly separated from the life-giving water. His face was contorted in pain and his mouth open as if to scream, but no sound came out. He continued to thrash, his hands now clawing at his temples. The whole time his eyes remained wide open, unblinking. It took everything Hermione had not to look away.

"We shouldn't be doing this," Ron said from behind her. "I didn't know that this would - we should have gone to Dumbledore. We should have gone to Dumbledore. We should have gone to-"

"There wasn't time," Hermione spat, not wanting to divert a drop of her focus from the last two fingers. A dull headache had set in behind her eyes. "We both knew that this was the only option."

"Look at him!" Ron screamed, his voice cracking. "Look at what you're doing to him and tell me that this is what Harry would want. The Harry that I know would never allow somebody else to suffer for him. Never."

Hermione reached for the final two fingers. Filch shook as she touched them, but she wasn't worried about that. She just had to pull these fingers away, and then she would be in control. And she would be able to save Harry. The feeling of warmth and power was racing around her body, filling her brain with righteousness and telling her that Ron simply didn't understand what was at stake.

The final fingers were the toughest of them all, and it took every ounce of Hermione's will to force them to relinquish their hold on Filch. The moment that she succeeded, his frantic motion stopped. She opened her left hand, letting go of her control over his mind, and the tingling, liquid, courage drained out of her.

"I think you did it," Ron said quietly.

She gave a meek nod. Now that the intoxicating feeling of the Imperius Curse had left her, her nervousness had returned, along with a strong sense of shame. Ron was right. She should never have done this. She hadn't been thinking about Filch. She had no idea what damage the forcible breaking of the Imperius Curse might have done, and she felt sick for having believed, even as she was watching his agony, that her desire to protect Harry justified those means.

Filch sat up slowly, his arms scrabbling to find purchase on the smooth ground as he pushed himself upright.

"Mr. Filch?" she asked hesitantly. "Who did this to you?"

He didn't answer, and she was hit by a jolt of fear. Yes, the cloudiness had left his eyes, but now they stared, lifeless, at something far far away. Merlin, what had she done?

"Mr... Mr Filch?"

He said something in response, but too quietly for her to hear. She stepped closer, bending so that Filch could speak almost directly into her ear.

"Painting," he whispered. But there was more. "Painting. Cloak. Polyjuice. Cup. Portkey. Potter. Him."

"What?" She was relieved beyond words that he was speaking, but there was no sense in what he said.

Filch pushed himself to his feet, his legs wobbling as they fought to support his weight. Ron rushed to prop him up, letting the caretaker lean on his shoulder. With his other arm, Filch pointed toward the centre of the maze.

When he spoke again, his voice was stronger. "Cup. Portkey. Potter. The - the Dark Lord."

"Those words," he continued. "All that he… all that he thought."

Hermione's head spun. The cup that Filch was referring to had to be the Triwizard Cup. So then it had been made into a Portkey by… by somebody, and it was intended for Harry?

Suddenly Filch's eyes glazed over, the irises dissolving into clouds, and Hermione was too slow to react. Filch moved far faster than a man of his age should have been able to, shoving Ron in the back and sending him tumbling into Hermione. They both crashed to the ground, and Hermione's wand was jarred out of her grasp.

The next thing she knew, Filch was upon them again. He dodged a spell cast by Ron, who had just risen to his feet, and then slammed a fist into Ron's stomach, sending him back to his knees.

"Ron!" Hermione yelled. She searched frantically for her wand, but it must have tumbled away. Panicking, she charged at Filch, but his palm caught her in the chin and she dropped like a fly, dazed by the blow. It was through a haze that she watched as Filch, his face expressionless, swung his metal boot into Ron's forearm, but she heard the ensuing crack all too clearly.

Somebody screamed. It might have been her.

The door to the commentator's box flew open, but Filch ignored it. He advanced towards Ron, who had backed himself into a corner, cradling his right arm.

"Volatilis Lutum!" a shrill voice shouted.

Filch's face almost seemed to explode, as dozens, if not hundreds, of black bats burst from his nose. He stopped in place, swatting at the bats with his hands, but there were far too many of them for that to be effective.

Ginny stepped through the door and into Hermione's field of view, her wand raised and unbridled fury etched on her face. Neville stood behind her, fumbling to pull his wand out of his robes. Hermione had never been happier to see Ginny, nor more terrified of her.

"Everte Statum!" the younger girl spat, slashing her wand through the air.

Filch was launched backwards as if he had been shot out of a cannon, slamming into the far wall of the box. He did not rise.

Ginny rushed to her brother's side. Neville helped Hermione, who was finding it very hard to keep her balance, walk over to them.

"Are you okay?" Neville asked.

"Of course not," Ron replied, gritting his teeth in pain. He moved his left hand away from his arm, revealing a chunk of blood-covered bone that had burst through the skin. A wave of nausea rose into Hermione's throat, and she had to turn away from the gruesome sight.

"You need the Hospital Wing," Ginny said, her voice much softer than usual. "But while I'm taking you there, you had better explain what the bloody hell happened here. Did you murder Mrs. Norris or something? One minute you and Hermione are walking past me, the next I see you sprinting-"

"Filch was Imperiused," Hermione interrupted, not wanting Ron to waste time by detailing the entire story. "But before that, he said something to us."

Ron nodded. "Cup, Portkey, Potter, the Dark Lord. But what does that mean?"

"It's obvious, isn't it? It means that You-Know-Who made the Triwizard Cup into a Portkey. Or that the Portkey goes to You-Know-Who, or something like that. But either way, we need to act now. We need to stop Harry from touching the Cup."

The confusion that had dominated Ginny and Neville's faces morphed into fear. Neville began to turn quite pale, and Ginny muttered something obscene under her breath. Evidently they hadn't previously realized that Harry might be in danger tonight.

"H-How are we going to do that?" Neville eventually asked, his eyes wide and his voice wavering. "If the Cup is already enchanted, and if Y..You-Know-Who..."

Once again, there was only one path forward. One dangerous, crazy, downright foolish path.

"We go into the maze and chase Harry down," Hermione replied. She took a moment to choose her next words before continuing. "Or I do, at least. Ginny, can I please, please count on you to take Ron to the Hospital Wing? And Neville, go straight to Dumbledore and tell him that Filch had been Imperiused, that the Cup is a Portkey, and that I've gone after Harry to stop him from touching it. Do you have all that? It's the most important job of all."

Neville nodded. Ginny and Ron, however, did not.

"I don't need my arm to run," Ron said, talking over both Ginny and Hermione's protests. "I'm coming with you, Hermione. Ginny, you go with Neville, alright?"

"Neville can handle it on his own," she said, patting him on the shoulder. "I'm coming with the two of you."

"Absolutely not," Ron exclaimed. "It's way too dangerous."

"Like hell it is. If Harry's in danger, I'm going to help him. End of story."

"Fine," Hermione snapped, over Ron's continued objections. She grabbed the Invisibility Cloak from the floor and swept it over herself. "Both of you just get under the Cloak."

It was a tight squeeze, but the three of them managed to waddle out of the commentator's box while entirely covered by the Cloak. They moved as quickly as they could down the stands, trying not to collide with oblivious spectators in the aisle.

Whoever had cursed Filch, they had also been able to re-apply the curse after Hermione had broken it, which meant that they knew that their plan had been discovered. More than that, it meant that they had to be somewhere in this stadium, and more likely than not they were trying to track down Hermione and the others.

The trio managed to make it down to the ground of the pitch without being detected. Hermione's heart pounded in her chest as they ran towards the entrance that Harry had disappeared through not fifteen minutes ago. She would get to him in time, she told herself. She had to.

Suddenly Ron stumbled, almost knocking her and Ginny over. The Cloak slipped out of her fingertips, but she managed to grab it before it fell.

"What the- we can't get in!" Ron whispered from ahead of her. He was standing right at the threshold of the maze, holding his good hand out as if pushing against a wall, but there was none there.

"What's the problem?" Ginny hissed from the back, trying to peer around Hermione.

Hermione ignored her. The maze must have been enchanted to make sure that nobody other than the champions could enter and interfere with the task. It was a perfectly sensible safety precaution, and something that she should have anticipated.

She turned to scan the crowd, hoping that her hunch was right. Sure enough, she found the Goblet of Fire sitting in the front row, right next to the Minister for Magic. It looked for all the world like an ordinary wooden cup; no flames had flickered within it since the champions had been selected. But the Goblet knew who the champions were, and so it had to be the key to the enchantment.

For the second time that day, Hermione found herself about to cast a spell that she had only ever read about in textbooks. To think that she had felt prepared...

She pushed that thought aside, trying to empty her mind as the book had suggested.

"Confundus," she whispered, her wand pointed squarely at the Goblet. At first, nothing happened. The book had said to expect that.

Then she allowed the belief to fill her mind, the belief that she, Ginny, and Ron were all Triwizard champions. As soon as she did, a dull pain began to throb deep inside her head, as if somebody were lightly tapping her brain with a hammer. The pain began to grow, but she didn't waver in her belief. The three of them were Triwizard champions. A few moments later the pain vanished, as suddenly as it started. Had the spell fizzled out?

"I think the wall is gone," Ron said quietly, reaching his good hand out over the edge of the maze.

"Go!" she and Ginny hissed.

Ron charged into the maze, the two girls right on his heels. After rounding the first corner, they came to a clearing with three exits. Hermione was debating whether a navigational spell would be useful when suddenly Ginny yanked on the Invisibility Cloak, pulling it off of their heads.

"I'm taking the centre path," she said, bundling the Cloak into a ball and handing it to Ron, who promptly dropped it. "You two each pick one of the others."

"I really don't know if we should split…" Hermione began.

"Too slow otherwise," Ginny yelled from the other side of the clearing as she ran towards the middle exit. "Go to the right with Ron if you don't think you can handle yourself."

Smarting, Hermione turned and took the left path alone. This wasn't the time to let Ginny get to her.

Hermione's path led her in a straight line for quite a while, giving her plenty of time to think about the obstacles that lay ahead. She could hopefully get by most things, thanks to the time she had spent training with Harry, but the Runespoor was going to pose a problem. She couldn't just talk to it the way that Harry could, and given how venomous it was, attacking it seemed like a bad idea.

The path forked several times, and after a few quick decisions (aided by the Four-Point Spell), she found herself faced with the absolute last person she expected.

"Professor McGonagall?"

McGonagall walked towards her slowly, wearing a look of deep disappointment.

"Do you have any idea," she began, looking down at Hermione, "not only how many school rules, but how many international treaties, you are currently violating, Miss Granger?"

For a brief moment Hermione was frozen in fear. Then words began to tumble out of her as she tried to explain what was going on.

"You're babbling, Miss Granger," McGonagall said, interrupting her mid-sentence. "I don't know what has gotten into you, but you're not making a shred of sense. Perhaps this is why Professor Binns was so disappointed in you today. He told me that you butchered his question on Liechtenstein, and that your overall mark was only 80%."

A reflexive wave of panic hit Hermione, but then a memory from almost exactly a year ago re-surfaced in her mind, and her panic turned to disappointment. How had she fallen for this again?

"Riddikulus!"

Giant cat-like whiskers sprouted from McGonagall's face, poking out from underneath her glasses, and despite the situation Hermione managed to force out a laugh. The Boggart recoiled as if it had been punched, staggering back into the hedge, and Hermione took the opportunity to dash past it.

"Point Me," she muttered, having come to a fork in the path. Her wand spun, indicating that due north was to her right. To the left it was, then.

She continued onward, still chiding herself for being slowed down so much by a stupid Boggart. The sky above grew darker and darker as she moved through the maze, and soon the only source of illumination was her own wandlight. She kept hoping to find some sign of Harry, some indication that he was close, but she had no such luck. She had to double back more than once after encountering a dead end, and she was just starting to wonder if this entire path was a decoy when she turned a corner and saw him.

He stood with his back to her, a lit wand in his hand, surveying something that lay ahead.

"Harry! Harry! Thank-"

He turned around, and she trailed off abruptly. Ginny stared back at her, unamused. As Hermione got closer, she saw that the younger girl's arms were dotted with bruises.

Ginny tucked her arms behind her back. "There was a miniature Whomping Willow back there," she said, in a tone that precluded any questions. "Do you know how to get past this?"

She nodded her head toward the path in front of her. There was nothing blocking the way, but the ground was covered in some kind of dark liquid that reminded Hermione of oil.

"I assume we can't just walk through?"

Ginny shook her head. "It's like superstrong Spellotape. One step in and you'd never get out again." She tilted her wand down, illuminating her shoeless feet.

Hermione looked out across the pool of liquid, trying to gauge how far it extended. It had to be at least forty feet - far too much to try and jump it. They were meant to magic it all away then, she supposed.

"Aguamenti."

The stream of water vanished just before hitting the liquid.

"Reducto."

The Blasting Curse spread ripples through the pool, as if something heavy had been dropped into it, but they soon dissipated.

If only she had learned Vanishing, she could have tried that, but that almost seemed too simple of a solution, anyway. There must be some other way to get rid of the liquid.

There was a rustling to her left, and she turned to see Ginny clinging to the side of the hedge, maybe a foot off the ground. Her wand between her teeth, Ginny began to climb, her hands and feet somehow finding purchase among the thin branches and spines. She was about halfway across the pool when Hermione gave up on her thinking and began to follow.

The wind started to pick up as Hermione climbed, sending a shiver through her and causing the hedge to sway. She stopped, clinging tightly to her handholds, as the hedge swung towards her, dipping her back unnervingly close to the liquid beneath.

Ginny continued to shimmy along the hedge, unperturbed, and eventually dropped to the far side of the pool with a soft thump. She continued onward without so much as looking back. Gritting her teeth, Hermione forced herself to move, trying to block out the to-and-fro of the swinging hedge. She focussed only on putting one hand next to the other, and before she knew it, she too could drop down to the far side of the liquid.

There were two paths on this side; Hermione took the one that Ginny hadn't, even though the Four-Point Spell suggested that it was headed in the wrong direction. She ran and ran, checking path after path for signs of Harry as she moved deeper into the maze. She could no longer hear the sound of the crowd: there was only the flutter of the wind in her ears and the quiet thuds of her footsteps in the grass.

Then suddenly there was a deep voice, a voice that carried an unmistakable accent.

"Diffindo!"

The hedge directly in front of her split nearly in two, a jagged hole forming through its middle. A pair of hands emerged, pulling the two halves of foliage further apart, and a tall figure pushed its way through the gap.

By the time Hermione saw the milky, empty whites of Viktor's eyes, his Stunner had already connected. She dropped to the ground, blackness crawling at the edge of her vision. Her heart raced as she fought to remain conscious, and by some miracle the blackness slowly receded.

"Crucio!"

She rolled, out of some instinct she didn't know she had, and the spell missed. She had to do something, cast some spell, but the Stunner had winded her, and it was all she could manage to take shallow, rapid breaths. Pushing herself to her feet, she staggered around the corner as another spell whizzed past her ear. She had to be close, if whoever was responsible for this was focussing on her. She spun around, knowing Viktor would soon come after her, and this time she would have to be ready for him.

"Impedimenta!" she stammered, just as he came into view.

He slashed his wand through the air and deflected her shaky jinx into a hedge.

"Crucio!"

"Avis!"

A cluster of birds - albeit far smaller than the spell was supposed to conjure - appeared in front of Hermione. The curse struck one of them, causing it to drop to the ground with a high-pitched whine that made Hermione's stomach turn.

Viktor clawed at the birds with his left hand, scattering them.

"Oppugno."

The birds swarmed him, and he stumbled backwards for a moment until his controller had the presence of mind to make him Vanish them. But by that point Hermione had slipped around him, and her Body-Bind Curse struck him squarely in the back.

She continued onward immediately, her hands trembling from the constant surges of adrenaline, but she soon realized that she was headed for yet another dead end. She began to double back, passing Viktor and the hole that he had cut in the hedge.

"Sorry," she said quietly. He probably wasn't Imperiused any longer, but she couldn't risk lifting her curse.

It was a long way back to the last path that she hadn't yet tried: she would have to return to the pool of liquid where she and Ginny had parted and follow in the tracks of the younger girl. Or did she?

She spun back around, looking more closely at the area of hedge that Viktor had forced his way through. The hedge must have been sealing itself, as the gap was much smaller than it had been before, but she was still able to see through it. Directly in front of her, on the other side, there was a long, narrow corridor, and at the very end of it was a pedestal upon which rested the small but unmistakable silhouette of the Triwizard Cup.

Her heart pounding, she slipped through the gap and took off towards the Cup. She was in Viktor's section of the maze now, but all four quadrants met at the Cup, so that didn't matter. She could wait there, right by the Cup, and stop Harry from touching it whenever he came along.

Her breaths were ragged now, her lungs aching from the frigid air. She hadn't run this hard for this long since her primary school days, but she forced her feet to keep pounding the ground before her. She was almost there, she told herself. Almost there. The Cup's silhouette grew larger and larger as she repeated that mantra.

Then all of a sudden a figure stepped in front of the Cup, blocking her view. Harry's back was to her, his gaze no doubt intent on the object he expected to be the end of his troubles. Panic rose in her throat like bile, and she couldn't bring herself to even shout, much less cast a spell. Her legs kicked into a gear that she would never have even imagined them possessing, and the gap between her and Harry seemed to vanish.

The next thing she knew, she crashed into him like a runaway train, wrapping her arms around his chest. But she was too late. As they fell to the ground, she saw the fingers of his right hand already curled around the Cup's handle. There was a jerk somewhere deep in her stomach as the Portkey activated, and her feet were lifted off the ground as the world around her and Harry began to spin.