Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter. I don't even own Dudley.
Harry was looking forward to the Care of Magic Creatures class all that week. Hagrid was throwing an end-of-project party in class to celebrate the faerie raising, and it was going to be the day before the 3rd task. Clearly, a lot of the Gryffindors were looking forward to it as well, because all of them seemed to be zoning out in class. Of course, Harry admitted to himself, that might be because the teachers have been pushing us a little too hard for the O.W.L.s Harry was dreading the tests, which were less than two weeks away.
All thoughts of the O.W.L.s were driven from Harry's mind, though, as the 5th years entered the Care of Magic Creatures class inside the faerie compound. Faeries and humans intermingled in the enclosure, and Hagrid served some food made especially for the occasion by the house elves (and not by Hagrid himself, Harry gladly noted.)
Harry personally loved the project and had made a present for the faeries. Drawing everyone's attention, he opened a small bow to reveal four balls: one red the size of a golf ball, two smaller ones the size of a large grape, and a tiny gold one smaller than a marble (which had little wings as well). Also, there were a bunch of tiny fake broomsticks, as well as four miniature bats. Harry completed the setup by putting up 6 large hoops, suspended by planks of wood. As soon as Harry was done, the two medium size balls started rocketing around.
The faeries' eyes all went wide when they saw this, and they all dived for a broomstick. Clearly, Harry's faerie had instilled a love of quidditch, and soon, over twenty faeries were playing a large scrimmage game. Hermione's faerie, he noticed, wasn't playing, but refereeing the match from atop one of the goals.
Harry laughed as her faerie made up a new penalty which would never be needed for regular quidditch: dropping your broomstick while flying. Soon, everyone was engulfed watching the miniature game, and everyone laughed as several of them did the 'Puking Buzzard'.
Meanwhile, Hagrid walked over to Ron and quietly asked to talk to him afterwards. Ron nodded, wondering what Hagrid wanted. So as Harry instructed them how to care for their new game set, and Hermione gave her faerie a goodbye present (another book), Ron walked back over to Hagrid at the end of the party.
"Ron," Hagrid said, "I gave almost everyone in the class good marks fer their faeries. But I had to give yeh a bad one – What did yeh do to your faerie?"
Ron was puzzled, and said, "Er, I didn't do anything unusual."
"Did yeh visit it everyday?" Hagrid asked.
"Yes!" Ron said, and then admitted, "Well, there were a couple of days…"
"Well," Hagrid asked, "Why won' your faerie have anythin' to do with about half of the others?"
Ron at first didn't know what Hagrid was talking about, and then explained, "Oh, I told him not to hang out with the Slytherins. I didn't want him to turn out bad."
"You did what!" Hagrid spoke loudly. "Faeries are some of the most innocent creatures there are. And you taught yours t' hate? On something as stupid as which house the person I assigned to look after it was in?" Look over there," Hagrid ordered, pointing at the Faeries.
"Can you tell me," Hagrid asked somewhat angrily, "which faeries are 'Gryffindor' and which are 'Slytherin'?" Ron looked, but all the faeries looked the same to him. Most were packing up the quidditch gear, side by side.
"Do you think it will matter ten years from now which house you're in? Well, which house was I in, then?" Hagrid asked. Ron didn't have answers to either of the questions. For all he knew, Hagrid could've been in Slytherin house 50 years ago.
"Which house…" Ron started, wondering which of the four Hagrid was in.
"Doesn' matter. But if it was Slytherin, would your faerie hate me?" Hagrid finished, a little softly. Ron felt a guilty churning in his stomach and went to help the faeries with the goal hoops. He hoped that several of them were the Slytherin faeries. That way his faerie might see him and have one last shot at redemption.
"C'mon, Ron, let's go," called Harry. Ron cast one last guilty at his faerie, and left the compound.
"I'm sorry," he whispered softly.
Harry watched as Alicia was mentally preparing herself at breakfast the next day. He was slightly amused, and hoped he wasn't that transparent when he was worried about the tasks last year. As Alicia finished and rose to leave, the Gryffindors all wished her luck. "I wonder if we're going to get to watch everything," Harry asked.
Ron said, "What do you mean, of course we'll get to watch. Why else would they have a stadium?"
Harry replied, "Well, last year's maze nobody could see inside. I don't see how it will be different if it's a mirror maze instead."
Hermione said, "What? It's going to be a mirror maze? How did you two hear what the last task is?"
Harry laughed and said, "Hermione, they tell the champions what the last task is a month beforehand. We heard from Alicia."
Ron continued, "I hear they're raising the stands this year. Everyone will be able to see inside. But I think they're putting some type of magic shell up which will prevent the champions from seeing the outside. That way, the champions can't see where they are based on where the audience is."
"Wow. I wonder what Alicia will see from the inside, then," Ginny said. After talking a bit more about mirrors and what each champion should do, they left the Great Hall and walked towards the grounds where the third task was.
Harry looked inside the maze, and was surprised. There were no obstacles or creatures inside! How was this supposed to be difficult for the champions? Surely the mirrors couldn't pose that big of a problem.
Harry changed his mind, though, as the three champions walked up to the three opening along the maze. He saw Alicia gasp – obviously there was more to it than Harry imagined. Richard Joel's voice cast over the crowd. "Hello," he called, "and welcome to the final task of this year's Triwizard Tournament. The rules are simple. No dark arts, and the champion who reaches the cup first wins! Now, Alicia Spinnet from Hogwarts and Jean DeGalle from Beauxbatons will start first, since they are in the lead. Shortly after, I will blow my whistle, and Petrina Ivanov will enter. Ready?"
Joel blew his whistle loudly. Alicia and Jean stepped into the maze, and were greeted me countless images of themselves and the triwizard cup appearing all over the place.
Alicia already had her strategy worked out, and was looking for which triwizard cup image was the largest. Seeing it, she set hesitantly off in that direction, her arms in front of herm. Soon she ran into a mirror, and examined which direction the image she saw bounced off. Awarded by a somewhat larger picture of the cup, Alicia continued along the path to the cup, as she heard the whistle for Petrina to enter.
Jean seemed to be having a hard time with the mirrors. In particular, he thought that the mirrors would reflect magic as well, and tried a summoning charm on the cup. The spell ended up going through several mirrors, and hitting Alicia, throwing her backwards until she came up with the counter-curse.
While Alicia was getting her bearings and trying to get sight of her path to the cup back, Petrina was taking a completely different approach. Time after time she would cast 'Quassi', shattering mirrors one by one around her. While it was much slower, it made the task an ordinary maze from her point of view.
Alicia was growing exicted; the cup was getting larger each step she took. The cup appeared only 20 meters away, when the image disappeared, replaced by a cracked mirror. "No!" she cried, and listed her options. She could run to the cracked mirror and hope that she could find the path after it. Unfortunately, this would mean going in the area of Petrina, who had most likely cracked the rest of the mirrors around her. She decided to follow another image of the cup, which didn't look far way either.
Alicia didn't have any difficulties getting to it, but when she arrived, she found a note inside which read:
I am sorry, but this is just a replica of the cup.
-Petrina Ivanov
Petrina, was meanwhile walking slowly around, braking mirrors and coloring the ground to show where she had been. Every so often she conjured a duplicate of the cup as well. It was slow and methodical, but it was guaranteeing her of reaching the cup eventually. However, she still needed more time, when it hit her what else she could do.
Alicia was yet again following a triziard cup image, which she could only hope was a genuine cup this time, when another misfortune hit her. One of the mirrors moved, tilting the cup's image away! Alicia cried out again, and realized that she wasn't going to find the cup first, as several mirrors began turning slowly, preventing her from getting good view of the cup. She adopted the mirror-breaking approach Petrina was using, but she had no clue even which general direction the cup was. She still set off gamely, in a random direction. When she finally noticed the floor's color was changed, she realized that she was just retracing one of the other champion's footsteps
Jean had just about given up. As luck would have it, he started in a section away from Petrina's mirror breaking, but the mirrors were the thing that stumped him the most. Spell after spell simply went through the mirror, and Jean unsucessively racked his brain for an effective spell. In the end, he decided to cast 'Accio' in random directions and hope to hit the cup by luck. It was unlikely, of course, but if it worked, he'd win the tournament when the cup flew itself through the maze to get to him.
Petrina had seen several large images of the cup through as of yet unbroken mirrors. It took all her willpower to refrain from running to the mirror and attempting to find it like Alicia. She turned the corner around another shattered mirror and saw a huge cup. Not daring to get her hopes up, she cast 'Quassi,' and the mirror behind the cup broke. She had found the cup!
She quickly ran over and grabbed it. Joel's voice boomed over the maze, "And Petrina Ivanov has got the cup! This year's winner is Durmstrang!"
A lot of the crowd moaned, disappointed, and a few even booed, which made Harry feel sorry for Petrina. However, someone else beat him to standing up for her; the last person he would have expected.
"How dare you!" yelled Ron at the crowd. "She won the cup fairly! She deserves it! Just because she was competing against us doesn't mean she should get booed! And how would Alicia feel, coming out with you all disappointed at her?" After saying this, he stood up and loudly cheered the champions. Harry, Hermione, and Ginny stood with him, soon followed by the rest of the Gryffindors, followed by the Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws. The Slytherins were already cheering before Ron gave his speech, and it made Harry smile that they were cheering for both Alicia and Petrina. Maybe they're not so bad after all, mused Harry.
Everyone was in the Great Hall, eating lunch and talking about the Triwizard cup. Alicia was talking about her experience in the maze, and everyone was enthralled with hearing about seeing over a hundred images of the Triwizard cup in different sizes. When she got to the part about the fake cup and the note from Petrina, several people squawked. Ron laughed, and said, "Well, I guess you found the cup first. It was just bad luck it turned out to be the wrong one!"
Harry realized he hadn't given Alicia her gift yet. He quickly ran up to the commons to grab it. When he got back down to the Great Hall, he hid the gift behind his back. "Alicia," he half sang, "I've got something for you…"
Alicia turned and looked at him. With her eyes half narrowed, she said, "Really."
Harry smiled even bigger and pulled the present out. It was a long polished piece of wood, with pictures all along the length of it. Alicia let out a burst of laughter. She had forgotten Harry taking rapid photos of her when her name was announced as the Hogwarts champion, and he clearly put them to a good use. None of the pictures were moving, but were aligned next to each other frame by frame, so Alicia could actually see how her expression moved even more accurately. The first several had her jaw simply hanging several inches. Then the pictures showed her blinking slowly. Finally, the end pictures revealed her shaking her head in disbelief before getting up to leave the table.
She looked up at Harry, who had a giant grin on his face. "You realize of course," she said, "I'll have to get you back for this." Harry wasn't too worried, since she said it with a big smile on her face.
Suddenly, everyone's gaze was drawn to the doors; Petrina Ivanov had just entered the hall and was walking down the Gryffindor table. Everyone was silent, and she stopped next to Ron. "Were you the guy that stood up for me after the match?" she asked.
Ron was clearly thinking fast, and took a quick glance at Hermione. Hermione didn't appear mad, but Ron didn't want to take any chances. "Er, Sorry," he said, "That was Neville Longbottom!" He quickly pointed Neville out, who was now blushing. Petrina walked over and gave him a kiss on the cheek, and said quietly, "If you ever visit Durmstrang, I'll make sure you get a personal welcome."
As she walked back out the hall and Neville somehow blushed beyond red, Harry, Ron, Fred, George, and Lee all cheered, "Go Neville!" Hermione and Ginny groaned, and muttered, "Boys."
Hagrid walked in, and congratulated Alicia. "But I didn't win," complained Alicia.
Hagrid waved that off, and said, "You tried yer best. An' look how many obstacles it took to throw yeh off!" Hagrid let out a big grin and patted Alicia on the back.
Alicia seemed to be getting another smile on her face, which made the rest of the Gryffindors happy. They were all worried that Alicia would be upset, like she was after the second task. As Hagrid was walking back out of the Hall, Harry suddenly remembered the centaurs. With a pang of sorrow about what happened to Firenze, Harry called, "Hey Hagrid! Are the centaurs ok?"
Hagrid turned back around. "Well," he said, "they're doin' ok. They're not avoidin' me anymore, but a few of em were still acting a bit strange. Bane was going on, saying 'I didn' see the end' He's probably just upset about not seein' Dumbledore's battle with Voldemort. Either that or he's complaining about not witnessin' the battle firsthand. I can understand how they'd be angry – did you hear that one of the centaur's hooves was cut off? Bloody shame."
Harry wasn't listening anymore. He doesn't understand, Harry thought, that Centaurs aren't concerned with anger. They're concerned with the future. And if Bane hadn't seen the end, that means Voldemort survived the battle with Dumbledore! But if Bane hadn't seen the end, then what had he seen? Harry tore off from the Great Hall with several Gryffindors calling after him.
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Only one more chapter left! (I decided not to split it into two and make a cliffhanger)
Hehe, Neville got himself a woman. Go Neville!
Thanks for all that have reviewed!
Atheis & Aeris – I'm glad you loved the Puking Buzzard! You know, when I got to the question about Snape being a Death Eater, I realized that I don't know why Snape became a death eater. So I decided to end the conversation. Sorry! I guess if I had to write a reason, though, I'd say he was taken down the slow path of corruption, maybe based on jealousy. Yeah, that sounds good.
JKButcher – Hehe, I hope you did ok on your BioChem test! I know what it's like – I've had several CompSci tests the last week. Oh, I forgot to mention in the review; I loved the strategic location of Hermione's kick. Beautiful!
Avide Reader – I decided to tone the argument down in the next story. There are only 4 main adjective/nouns used, 3 which JK uses herself. To tell you the truth, I don't know whether the fourth is G or PG, but I think I'll put it as G anyway. I doubt anyone will be offended by the word.
Lastly, I apologize to Athena Keating Thomas. I saw your review, but I forgot to mention you on the story. I'm sorry!
Please Review!