A/N: Lots of action in this one, please let me know how you feel about the switching perspectives. I'm trying to get through a lot of content before we get back to the main show, this chapter really ran away from me. I'd not originally planned on fleshing out the other 3 Champions, but here we are!

[Fourth Year, Just before the First Task]

Harry rolled out of bed, feeling refreshed from a full night's rest. He hadn't practiced his spells at all for a full day to keep from exhausting himself. He needed all his magical power today for the First Task. Thanks to Hagrid's timely intervention two weeks ago, he had been able to find out that the First Task of the Triwizard Tournament was to fight dragons. Harry's skill with Aguamenti would be more than up to the task, pun fully intended, of keeping him safe from the dragon's fire.

A wall of water two meters thick would dampen the effects of any fire, no matter how potent.

He made his way down to the Great Hall, snagging some toast and pumpkin juice, quickly scoffing both before heading down to the Quidditch pitch and the tent set outside it for the Champions. He saw the older three champions duck into the tent just ahead of him, their longer legs preventing him from catching up.

Harry pushed past the tent flap, seeing four benches in a square, with a table set in the middle. He took the bench nearest to the entrance, seeing it left empty by the other champions. Harry tried to catch Cedric's eye from across the tent, but the older Hogwarts student was staring right at the edge of the table, frantically muttering to himself. Harry shared a brief nod with Krum, the Durmstrang student seemed surly as usual, but had a quiet air of confidence around him. Fleur, the only female champion, had her eyes shut as she swayed lighting from side to side, softly humming to herself.

Harry took a deep breath, sinking into a light meditative trance as he waited for Ludo Bagman to show up with directions. Dragons…surely the judges wouldn't expect them to kill a dragon? Instead maybe there would be some objective, and they would have to fight past the creatures?

The four champions looked up in sync as the tent entrance flapped open, with Ludo Bagman striding in, holding a small bag.

"Well well, it seems you've all gathered in time for the start of the First Task! Splendid, absolutely splendid!" Bagman seemed hardly able to contain his excitement; the man was practically bouncing on the tip of his toes. Harry could hear the dull roar of the audience from afar as the stadium filled up, the faint edge of nerves hitting him now.

Bagman seemed to master himself as he cleared his throat. "Unfortunately, we've heard some rumors of cheating amongst the champions. Somehow, word has leaked on what exactly you were to be facing today! Now, we'll set aside how such a leak occurred and instead focus on how the First Task will be changing to accommodate the necessary amount of difficulty needing to be upheld."

Harry frowned. What on earth could they do to change the task at this juncture, merely an hour before it started? He noticed similar looks of apprehension on his fellow champions' faces.

"Due to the short notice of the cheating, we had to quickly procure replacements for you to fight against. Originally, we were going to have you attempt to acquire a golden egg from the dragon you were facing. Thanks to the changes, you now just have to survive against your foe for at least a minute. The longer you survive, the more points you earn. If you cross the two-minute mark you will earn the clue for the Second Task. One of you will be lucky enough to still be fighting a dragon, but the task will of course be much harder." Bagman's grim words weighed on the four teens heavily.

"Now then." Bagman set the bag down in the center of the table. "Draw from the bag. The monster drawn will indicate what you are fighting, and the number on the attached medal will indicate the order that you will be fighting in."

Fleur reached into the bag first, pulling out a small disc with an Acromantula drawn on it with the number 3. Seeing her disgusted look, Bagman chuckled before explaining that a single Acromantula wouldn't provide enough of a challenge, even fully grown, so she would have to contend with a small herd. The man flatly refused to expound on just how many a "small herd" of Acromantulas would contain.

Passing the bag clockwise, Cedric next reached into the bag, pulling out a Hungarian Horntail with the number 1 on it. He breathed an audible sigh of relief and sheepishly flashed a look of apology at Harry as he passed the bag to Krum. The older Seeker reached into the bag and pulled out a Chimera with the number 2, looking thoroughly unhappy as he passed the bag to Harry. Harry grimaced as he reached in, knowing he'd be fourth to go already, pulling a Quintaped out of the bag, paling rapidly.

Harry rapidly re-evaluated his strategies as he sat on his bench. He had planned on conjuring a dome of water two meters thick before transfiguring it to solid diamond as a shield against a dragon. Against a Quintaped, one of the most vicious magical creatures on the planet, far beyond the threat of a dragon, Harry would have to conserve his magical power as much as possible.

He mentally thanked Hermione for convincing him to study and master the Cushioning charm.

Bagman paused at the exit to the tent, before turning around and staring back at the four teens, delivering an absentminded, if stern announcement. "Oh, and one last thing. Once I leave, you won't be able to hear anything out of the tent. Once you leave you also will not be able to return." Bagman then turned back and left the tent, leaving the four champions to their thoughts.

[Judge's Table]

Albus looked out onto the empty field, a stark contrast to the stands, which were stuffed nearly to bursting with spectators. Tickets for each of the tasks had sold out within days of the four champions' names being announced.

One side of the stadium had a massive tunnel leading to it, through which the dragons were originally planned to be towed through. The other side had a much smaller tunnel, for the champions.

Ludo Bagman's voice boomed out, urging the first champion to enter the arena. Albus smiled slightly as Cedric Diggory appeared, the young man calmly jogging out onto the field, stopping a few feet from the mouth of the tunnel.

Albus gradually stopped smiling as Ludo explained the rules to the Hogwarts Champion. Young Mr. Diggory would have 5 minutes to prepare for his foe, and he could use any spells as lethal as possible, besides the understandable caveat of the Unforgivables, with no legal repercussions. The teen nodded, his stance noticeably firming up, his wand casting the instant Ludo allowed him to.

The boy was talented. That was a simple fact. He must have gone digging through several more…obscure books, to enchant the small lake of water as he was doing so presently. Albus leaned forward in interest. Was that? Ahh, yes it was. It had been many years since he had last seen a young wizard with an elemental aptitude. His eyes sparkled as his fellow judges' mouths opened in surprise. Mr. Diggory was clearly enchanting Living Water, imbuing the water with enough will to carry out tasks given to it, yet not enough that it could turn on the caster.

The aging wizard leaned back in his chair, letting out a delighted chuckle. If the rest of the champions expressed even an inkling of elemental magic, Albus might just eat his hat.

The young man continued, saving the bulk of his time for the Living Water, a necessary precaution, going on to transfigure several small boulders into wolves, which he left un-animated. As Ludo told Cedric to cease his preparations, the Hungarian Horntail was portkeyed into the stadium and set loose. The young man snapped out his wand, a stream of Living Wind issuing from it, hastily binding the dragon's mouth shut, a billowing cloud of flame issuing from between its' clenched jaws, thankfully far away from Mr. Diggory. His Living Water leapt up, binding the dragon's notorious tail while the wolves were hastily animated, leaving them to snap and howl at the dragon's haunches, thoroughly distracting it from the very alive and breakable wizard.

And then Albus nodded as Cedric did his best impression of a shadow, hiding from the dragon's increasingly incensed view as his wolves and Water did the bulk of the work harrying it for the required allotted time for him to get his clue.

Albus clapped as Ludo called for an end to the match, chuckling as the dragon keepers tried to puzzle out how to undo the Living Water before Cedric undid it for them. Most wizards simply didn't have the power needed to negate something like that.

[Cedric]

He panted a bit. Quidditch hadn't really prepared him for this. Hiding behind rocks while dodging occasional blasts of fire from an enraged dragon while keeping a pack of stone wolves up was not what he had expected to do during the Tournament. He was glad that he had had read up on elemental spells and started to work on them recreationally last year, as a sort of after school project, or he would have never had the time needed to work on it in the week since he'd been tipped off by Hagrid.

Luckily both Living Wind and Living Water spells had worked out, though he had cheated a bit and not gone for enchanting Living Air, as he had felt he wouldn't have been given enough time. The stone wolves were what he had originally planned but given that he needed to stay alive and uncooked, figured that the elemental spells needed to come out. It had tipped his hand a bit early, since Cedric had planned to keep the elemental spells under wraps for a possible duel segment, but there was nothing for it now. Not to mention that he got possibly the second easiest of the magical creatures, so Harry and Krum for sure would have to showcase higher amounts of magic to stay alive in their respective challenges.

[Judges' Table]

Albus smiled, quite happy with how the first champion's foe had been dealt with. Now it was time for scores, and he quite happily sent up a ten. Olympe sent up an understandable nine, the young wizard hadn't done much direct spell casting, relying mostly on his prepared wolves and Living Water. Igor gave an eight, and Albus could see how much it pained the man to not score lower, but with the level of spellcasting displayed, grading any lower would allow for rescoring calls to be made. Bartemius gave the young lad an eight, and Ludo gave him an eight as well. Perhaps it was a bit small of him, but Albus didn't quite think either of the two Ministry workers understood just how impressive the elemental magic really was.

With a quite solid 43 points, Cedric made to move off to the Mediwitch's tent, but Albus beckoned him forward.

"You didn't think you'd run off without your clue, my boy?" Albus chuckled as he leaned in close, weaving a bubble of silence around himself and Mr. Diggory. "Your clue for the next task is… 'Try'." Trying to not show his complete befuddlement, Cedric moved off into the Healer's tent, and Ludo called for the next champion, Mr. Krum to come to the arena.

[Viktor]

He tried his best not to shake as he entered the arena. Viktor was no stranger to coming out into an arena packed with screaming people, but he would be lying if he said he wasn't nervous. He might be one of the world's best Quidditch players, but he was certainly not one of the world's best Class 5 magical creature killers.

That hinged on being allowed a certain spell, of course.

The overly pompous announcer (he'd seen quite a few of those, bags of wind with no substance to them) informed him that were essentially no limits on the magic he could cast. They made a note of the Unforgivables, and if he weren't so inured to classic British idiocy at this point he would have rolled his eyes. Of course he wasn't about to use any of the Unforgivables. Setting aside the fact that a solid two out of three of them wouldn't affect a Chimera, and he still wouldn't fancy a life sentence.

5 minutes to prepare, and full license to use the only spell he needed for this encounter. Viktor knew he wouldn't hit the two-minute mark for survival but going up against a Chimera meant that he really needed to take it down hard and fast. His eyes briefly flickered over to the Judge's Table as he thought that really only someone like Albus Dumbledore could win in a battle of attrition with a Chimera.

Viktor took a deep breath as he sunk into a ready stance, almost as if he was about to start boxing instead. He loosened the muscles in his shoulders, as they tensed, and took a series of deep, slow breaths to center himself fully. He cast a lift muffling charm on his ears, to dampen the noise of the crowd, but not enough to block out all sound. If the Chimera dodged his spell or he had to wrestle it under control, he didn't want to be distracted or unaware.

[Judges' Table]

The air was starting to gain a slightly hazy look around young Mr. Krum. The almost oily nature of the air, visible even all the way over to the judges' table, instantly clued Albus into the nature of spell that the young man was preparing to cast.

It had to be one of the series of escalating Hell Fire spells that culminated in Fiendfyre. If he judged the power of the spell correctly, it would be near the top of the list, either Hellfyre or Fiendfyre itself. Despite what many would say to the Dark nature of such a spell, Albus could think of very few ways to achieve victory versus a Chimera without losing one's life, and even fewer with the limited magic that a young man operated with in comparison to himself.

Fiendfyre (and Hellfyre, for that matter) neatly sidestepped the issues of containment and magical power. Its intrinsic property of eating magic would essentially allow it to home in on the incredibly magical Chimera. No, young Viktor wouldn't be having any difficulty casting the spell, as he obviously possessed sufficient magical power to even think of it, but the real difficulty stemmed from controlling the spell itself. Left unchecked, it would destroy not only the Chimera, but young Mr. Krum as well, and most likely much of the stadium and spectators before Albus would have a chance to contain or extinguish it.

As the seconds to the start of Mr. Krum's challenge ticked down, a faintly perceptible hum of magic began rippling around the Hogwarts Headmaster. His fellow headmaster and headmistress looked over at him with faint respect, while the two Ministry workers just looked around a bit fearfully. Albus' eyes flashed as the magic around him built up, the air visibly warping as he brought his full power to readiness.

If he had to contain an out of control Hell Fire spell, he really wanted to be ready for it.