"Granger, we've got movement!" Cedric called, from the place he'd taken on the walls when they finally figured out how to get him back into the Fort. It was possible that Hermione had a problem over-thinking things. On occasion. Just a bit. Their plan to get people in as necessary had, unlike all their other plans, not survived contact with the enemy — the enemy in this case being the logistics of a single person casting multiple spells at once. (Somehow it hadn't occurred to Hermione in the course of her overthinking everything else that they might need to bring in just one person at a time.) Cedric's solution to his inability to maintain the platform-stabilising charms and his shield charm simultaneously had been to just...build a bridge and walk up to the top of the palisade, which was...

Sensible. It was very sensible. Perhaps a bit boring, and impressive only in the scale of the conjuration, but sensible.

(Honestly, it made Hermione feel like an idiot, overlooking such an obvious solution.)

"It's Tori," the Weasley twin said, sounding distracted enough Hermione couldn't help but wonder exactly what was going on up in the stands. Tori had asked for help over the surveillance system, and even if the other teams couldn't communicate with their schoolmates outside, it seemed reasonable to expect that some of the foreign students might have realised that the boy beside her was a twin — the Weasleys had made themselves very visible earlier, in the Great Hall, and before that, helping Lyra enter the Tournament in the first place — and realised that the other twin had to be somewhere in the Hogwarts section, watching and relaying that information.

She really didn't want to draw attention to that suspicion right now, though. As long as the twins said they were fine, they could keep narrating, she wasn't going to question it and risk her uncertainty and distracting external concerns spreading to the rest of the team.

"Jones and Prince are down and out — the Durmstrang weather witch fucking fried them, but commentary's saying they were knocked out by backlash from their shields being overwhelmed, not the actual lightning, so that's good. And the girl they had scrying for them is having a panic attack or something, Weather Witch is trying to calm her down now, so I think we can assume they'll stay there for the time being. Nott led their last guard off and ambushed him in the trees. Guard's unconscious, Nott's...probably trying to get back here, looks like the fire isn't as substantial as we thought—"

That would make sense, given that most of the fires had started in the treetops, and fires tended to burn upward. They'd already discussed the role the weather witch must have been playing in redirecting their people. Without him pushing the winds around, there might not be very much fire at ground level at all...

"—but this is Nott, we think he's lost."

Hermione rolled her eyes. "Well, we can't spare anyone to go find him. You have eyes on Harry, right?"

"Yep. Still dead to the world."

"Good." The violinist shot her a funny look. "Not that he's unconscious, good that we know where he is. Weasley, you and Cedric go find Harry. And Violet, you should go, too. You may need to patch him up to get him back here. Neville, Astoria and I will figure out how to get the crown."

"We could wait and take it with us, just crown him out in the field," Cedric suggested.

"No, I don't want to risk it if there's anyone still out there who could ambush you and steal it." She was pretty sure there was at least one veela still unaccounted for, it wouldn't be all that hard to swoop in and grab it, and flame away to give it to Cæciné... "Just bring Harry back here."

"Problem," Neville called, still rather subdued, and despite his claims when she asked if he was alright, Hermione didn't think he was just exhausted.

"What is it?"

"We collapsed the external half of Ced's bridge, and Tori's only a second-year. She can't build one for herself."

Hermione huffed. "We only needed two halves because Cedric was outside and couldn't conjure past the shield dome to get in. We can push a bridge out just fine." It was actually much easier than the platform-levitation plan they'd used to get the Distraction Team out, the "inside" half was still balanced between the top of the wall and the top of the palisade, they just needed to lower a ladder, basically. It was a bit tricky maintaining the proper shield charm to get back in and climbing at the same time, according to Cedric, but it worked just fine. "Wait. Does Tori know the shield charm she needs?" It was a relatively obscure one...

"Er...probably not," Cedric admitted. "She's little enough to carry piggy-back. I can go first and carry her back through. Ready, Vi? Weasley?"

"Yes, the second patient's stable and I've renewed the sleeping charms on both of them. You should be fine with them as long as no one hits them with a Finishing Charm," the healer told Hermione and Neville, joining Cedric on the wall.

"You okay being blind in here, Maïa?" the Weasley twin asked quietly.

"I'm going to hate every second of it," she assured him, "but it's more important that you find Harry at this point, and quickly. Go on."

She shooed him toward the wall, just as Tori skipped down the nearest ramp, calling, "Thanks, Cedric!" over her shoulder.

Her voice sounded far too loud in the sudden silence. Hermione turned to Ryan, startled. She hadn't been paying much attention to the music, but it had become so thoroughly a part of the background of the Fort that she found its absence a bit jarring.

"I'm sorry, did you expect me to keep playing without a narrator? Because I don't see much point in that, and I'm knackered." He sat down, leaning his head back against the wall, and closed his eyes.

"No, no, just...wasn't expecting the quiet, I suppose."

"So now, we just...wait?" Neville said uncertainly.

Tori grinned, pulling two neatly folded, brightly coloured squares from beneath her butchered cloak. "No, now we have a crown to retrieve!"

"And then we wait," Ryan said drily, eyes still closed, looking for all the world as though he might take a nap while they waited. Hermione wasn't certain whether she more envied or despised his sangfroid, but she definitely found him irrationally annoying.

To keep herself from snapping at him, she busied herself pulling down their own flag. "Alright, Tori. Let's do this."

They laid the flags out one atop the next in the centre of the Fort, first Durmstrang, then Hogwarts, with Beauxbatons on top (because "red and blue make purple, Maïa, obviously we have to have Hogwarts in the middle..."), the apparently random silver embroidery overlapping to form runes, as expected. They didn't activate a portal to a pocket dimension, however, as Lyra had suggested they would.

The fabric began to shimmer, growing translucent and silvery, almost like Harry's invisibility cloak, the runes burning gold, increasing in intensity until Hermione had to look away. There was a flash at the corner of her eye, and when she looked back the flags were gone, apparently transfigured into an ornate corolla — not the simple silver coronet Director Zabini had shown them this morning, someone must have decided in the meanwhile that that wasn't impressive enough, or something — gold and silver shaped (appropriately) in imitation of a laurel wreath.

Tori, with an impish smile, plucked it up off the ground and set it on Hermione's head with a rustle of paper-thin metal leaves. "All hail the victorious general!" she declared, giggling.

Hermione felt her face growing warm. She took it off to examine the metalworking more closely. It honestly looked as though real leaves had been transmuted to silver and gold, so thin and realistically formed that they shivered and rippled with the motion when she turned it in her hands. Goblin work? She honestly didn't have much experience with magical jewelry, beyond the (admittedly absurdly fancy) pieces Lyra wore on a daily basis, but so far as she'd been able to gather, the more complex and delicate a piece of magical jewelry was the more likely it was goblin-made.

"So!" the little Slytherin said brightly. "Has anyone given any thought to the Triumph? Because we can't not celebrate winning the First Task of the Triwizard Tournament."

"Don't get ahead of yourself, Greengrass," Ryan drawled. "We haven't won yet. The others still have to drag Potter's sorry arse back here."

Tori pouted at him.

"So, now we wait."

"Yes, Neville," Hermione sighed. "Now we wait."