The afternoon rocketed by until Harry found himself inside that damn Champions' tent for the third, and hopefully final, time.
Contrarily to what he'd half expected, the roomy, space was empty of everybody except the four champions. No Ludo Bagman, no headmasters, no Board of Governors or tournament organisers had come to gawk and talk and feel like they were a part of making history.
("The new and improved Triwizard, now safe enough for the modern witch and wizard!" had been touted more and more loudly as each new day passed without a death count and everyone seemed pleased with themselves.)
Their absence left Harry feeling rather off-balance, even slumping as he was on one of the wooden stools placed near a wall for his convenience.
As it had this whole year, light seemed to seep through the red canvas walls and cast a dull tint over the lush, crimson rug that decorated the centre of the champions' tent. The enchanted flame that danced dizzyingly near the highpoint of the tent cast tiny flashes of silver brightness, like reflections through water, over the walls and floor.
The shimmering weave of rainbow magic that billowed gently in the breeze didn't help his nausea.
They'd been provided with a small selection of food and drink this time, which Harry didn't have the heart to think about, and the champions' stools were well pushed back against the opposite wall. Currently, each stool was occupied by a Champion in various states of nervous preparation.
Harry, for example, had hands that were slick and slippery with sweat, and a purple bruise was throbbing on his lip where he'd gnawed away at it with his teeth. Fleur was rocking gently and muttering quietly to herself. Viktor was stoically silent and stern, arms crossed and glowering. Cedric was stuck in a loop of unnecessary action.
"I've really learned to hate that colour red," the fidgeting Hufflepuff told the room mildly from where he sat, his voice breaking through the heavy air like water droplets falling into a still pool.
Harry squinted at the many red things he could see. "What? I mean, which red in particular?"
"The way the light seeps through it dimly," Cedric clarified as he sat perched on a stool near the corner, a tiny bottle of wand polish and a greying cloth clearly visible between his nervous, moving hands. "Like being stuck at the bottom of the Black Lake again, but the only light that reaches this far down is blood-coloured, because we're all going to die."
"I…er," Harry blinked.
Fleur and Viktor looked up from their own musings.
"And it's heating up as we sit here, breathing with the doors closed and all," the older boy continued, his fixed stare into nothing contrasting oddly with the rhythm of his hands still circling his ash wand. "And the heat is rising like water, and it makes it hard to breathe, and we're drowning in tension and red means 'danger', anyway, and I didn't get to see your first challenges but the way the torches glowed crimson – always in the corners of my eyes – while I was trying to survive facing down a dragon make me realise that injury and danger and death are closer than we think so when I look at toda—"
"Hey!" Harry interrupted sharply. "Hey, Cedric. You okay, Diggory?"
The air itself felt heavy and significant for a long moment while each champion stared.
Then Cedric swallowed, much louder than he'd intended with audible gulping noise and high-pitch squeak, and the tension broke. As the Hufflepuff promptly flushed an attractive shade of pink, Harry hissed out a laugh, Fleur snorted inelegantly, and even Viktor chuckled once.
The heavy sense of impending doom receded as the four teenagers giggled, only somewhat hysterically.
"Aww, stars," Cedric chuckled in embarrassment, looking at his polish-splattered hands in surprise and promptly spelling the bottle, cloth, and stains away. "You can always count on me to overthink things, my Keeper always says. Oh! He's my Quidditch Keeper, for Hufflepuff, you know. Ah, you might have a passing familiarity with Herb, Herbert Fleet, a fellow sixth-year…?"
Harry thought about it: he had a vague recollection of a tall, skinny blond guy, pretty good on a broom, with impressively long arms. "…Seems like a decent chap?" he offered.
Fleur and Viktor glanced between them.
"…Yeah," Cedric offered after the pause dragged on. "That's fair. He never went to your Patronus Club, I don't think. Anyway."
Fleur and Viktor muttered kind nothings that distracted nicely until they, too, subsided into silence.
In the stillness, small snatches of the world outside slipped into the tent through the flapping canvas door. The indistinct noise of the crowd was swelling louder, presumably as the stands filled up. Ludo Bagman – who might be a gormless, gambling pillock, but could certainly work a crowd – was cheerfully recounting…something that wasn't any of Harry's concern. The history of the tournament, Viktor's quidditch statistics. He didn't have to worry about it right now, at any rate.
Through the intermittent flapping of canvas that highlighted the contrast between the champions' pressure and everyone else, Harry could hear the audience cheer back occasionally in response, so Bagman was doing his job. Then there were the distinguishable cries of Tournament vendors advertising collectables, and the heavy footsteps outside the champions' tent were accompanied by the short, sharp reporting of the aurors on duty, doing their best to keep Harry and the champions safe while they prepped in growing stress.
At the thought of 'safety', Harry sighed, scraped a hand over his scalp, and turned to the older students who were seated to his right.
"Hey, uh…We probably should settle down soon into, I dunno, meditation or whatever pre-Task focus thing we each prefer, but I feel that I really should…I don't mean to make this about me, but…At any rate, I'd feel guilty forever if I didn't say this and later regretted it, so."
The three older students turned to look at Harry with very patient gazes. They weren't necessarily all friends, exactly, but after this year they had definitely formed some kind of team attitude: Champions against the world, Harry figured. Shared experiences, and all that.
Fleur, obviously, had been revealed this year to be as fabulous as Harry had always thought her. Viktor was shockingly kind. Cedric "Remember Cedric" Diggory was so unassuming, so blindingly humble and hopeful and humorous that it stung Harry's chest to think about it.
As such, they all looked at Harry as he spoke before each taking a moment to drag their stools forward or back a bit so they could all see him clearly, and made themselves comfy.
While their stool legs scraped over the rug and minor swearing drifted over to him as Fleur caught something on the rug weave, Harry reached up his left hand to fiddle with the new leather string that hung around his neck, a few inches higher than his mokeskin pouch. It was tied to a hagstone: a vaguely triangular piece of Hogsmeade limestone with a single hole in it, bored naturally by the constant movement of the Black Lake from whence Luna had found it.
It would bring him luck, she had told him as she'd tied it around Harry's neck. Felix Felicis might be banned in the tournament, but small magics would be fine.
Harry's thumb rubbed against the smoothed corner of the uppermost point and squinted while he tried to marshal his thoughts.
"Ah…" he spoke when three pairs of eyes were finally on him. "The Triwizard Tournament has always been risky, right? But the third Task has always been the worst of all, historically speaking." He added, "Hermione did the research for us."
Viktor nodded heavily. They'd spent a lot of time together in the library and both shared their own tessomancy, despite Hermione's confused spectating. Not even she could deny that they had, without prior agreement, both been seeing the same symbols in their teacups and they didn't look good.
"The falcon, the ferret, the hour-glass, and the knife have been in all my teacups this week. And also in Viktor's," Harry explained to Fleur and Cedric. "And my rune draws have constantly repeated Nauthiz, Hagalaz, and Eihwaz – which doesn't bring me any comfort."
Out of the three of them, only Cedric looked a little sceptical. "…Okay?"
Harry shot him a stressed grin. "Don't take Divination, I take it? They're not a great combination."
"Well, yeah, but even if I don't—"
Harry continued. "Even if you're not a fan of divination, you just need to think about what's already gone down this year in the tournament. First, the tournament's powerful magical artefact is confunded to add a mysterious fourth school into which an underage student is placed."
Cedric settled back into his own stool with a frown of remembrance.
"Then a teacher is kidnapped and imprisoned so an Azkaban escapee can replace him for reasons unknown."
Fleur pursed her lips. "Huh. I 'ad forgotten zees, some'ow."
"It vos some months ago." Viktor crossed and recrossed his arms.
"Then," Harry steepled his fingers together and leaned forward over his knees, "a Tournament judge is found to be under the imperius for purposes also unknown. And we realise that the Azkaban escapee was willing to put his life and soul at risk in order to hide amongst the most public event of the year and cast highly illegal spells – and commit more crimes – while he did so."
"Ah!" Cedric sat up at that. "About that, in case you haven't been following the papers. Crouch Junior – the imposter – was Kissed for his crimes. He wouldn't admit to anything under interrogation, and bit off his own tongue when they tried Veritiserum. So Fudge gave it all up as a bad job and gave him to the Dementors."
Viktor's frown deepened.
Fleur shuddered. "'Orrible creatures."
"Horrible minister."
They shared a moment of silent ponderings while the canvas door flapped an arrhythmic stutter.
"Anyway," Harry added, ready to hammer his point home. "Beyond the sheer ineptitude, casual prejudice and incompetence of the general organisation – the ministry, that Umbridge woman, whatever – we're probably dealing with an actual plan, here, to…for purposes currently unknown. And this purpose doesn't seem to have been met yet, and therefore is probably going to happen, well, this afternoon."
A pause.
"If I ever find that stupid leetle toad-woman," Fleur spat out quietly, "I will end her in the most violent way I know."
"That's…fair," Cedric agreed.
Harry was distracted by choosing his next phrase carefully, or he would have added some enlightening comments.
"And zat 'Bagman', zee stupid little pedant who zeenks 'ees an 'ero," Fleur continued. "Zee organisers, too, 'oo told us zat zee Tournament would be 'safe'…I 'ave 'alf a mind to 'unt zem all down."
Murmured agreements rumbled as now Viktor and Fleur bonded over their frustration, filling the tent from his high peaks to the lush rug on the floor while Cedric's eyebrows rose.
"…Also fair."
Harry opened his mouth to push on.
"I 'ate to say eet, conseedering your own, moderately reasonable characters," Fleur continued, nodding at Cedric and Harry, "but I am begeening to zink zat zee Breetish wizards all 'ave ignoble…ah…de la personnalités narcissiques." She devolved into a frustrated muttering that Harry couldn't follow.
"Some days I wonder," Cedric interrupted Harry's thoughts darkly, reminding him of the older boy's father.
"Right," Harry coughed. "Sorry, as interesting as all this is...if I could just come back to the point. Um…This third task is also where we'll get our 'rewards', whatever they will be. A return on the sacrifice of our magic, increased growth rate, magical boost or refinement – frankly, no one ever actually explained to me how it worked, just that the risk and reward came together, and it was the Goblet that'd do it. Today, right?"
This time the stoic Krum spoke up. "Headmaster Karkaroff has told me some," the boy volunteered, "but it does not seem that now is the right time to talk about vot I have learnt."
"Oui," Fleur nodded.
Cedric and Harry briefly shared a glance. Hogwarts was clearly the most hands-off of the schools.
"Thanks." Harry nodded. "Sorry, I keep going on. Basically, what I'm trying to say is that…"
He wiped his slick hands down the sides of his robes again.
"Out with it, Potter," Cedric chivvied him.
Harry snorted. "My lawyer, um." His skin pricked as the focus on him sharpened. "My lawyer has asked me to tell you that, um, this task might be why I was vicariously entered into the Tournament. And um, I have at last a few enemies that want me dead. A historic thing," he waved a hand to dismiss the details for the foreign students who might not have followed the Fall of the Dark Lord ten years ago. "It's just a guess, but, er…my only claim to fame is that I inadvertently offended a large number of people when I was a toddler, and, yeah…"
Cedric scoffed in polite dismissal. "Hardly your only claim to fame."
"Well." Harry puffed a breath of warm air, then shrugged. "But still. Um, as far as I'm concerned, the logical conclusion is that these guys – and their bosses or groups or whoever they were working with – must have been angling to affect this task, the one with all the rewards attached. My lawyer hasn't been able to tell me who they are, or why," which was true, and even if Harry knew better, he couldn't tell these kids about his time travel, "but we do know that they'll use Unforgivable curses and have an agenda that's work risking their souls for."
There was a heavy silence while his competitors hopefully absorbed everything that Harry was telling them and even more, what he was implying.
Into the introspective quiet, Harry hastened to add: "If you find yourself somewhere where you can't see the audience…somewhere they can't see you, the sky looks different, if something seems wrong. Um, think of a destination you can apparate too, alright? Just, ah, just in case. Of the worst-case scenario. Decide now," he added, "so you'll have less hesitation wh—if the time comes."
The young eyes, optimistic, ingenuous, ever-so-slightly sceptical of his doom-and-gloom predictions, made Harry's eyes burn.
"My lawyer told me to assume the worst," Harry added after he thought they'd had enough time to think it through. "I'll be going all out. Either it'll be something in the maze that'll kill me – or kidnap me or whatever – or it'll be at the end of it." He wiped his hands on his robes again. "I mean, I genuinely don't want to discourage you from winning or whatever but…Please. Be careful, won't you? I don't know how I'd live with myself if someone was permanently wounded or killed in this task because someone was trying to get to me."
There was more he could say, there was more he did say, but their conversation drifted into known spells, and appropriate counters for things, and when to send up red sparks.
He'd tried to warn them.
But was it enough?
Harry's eyes lingered on Cedric, whose hair flopped youthfully over his forehead, his face so open and young. So unprepared. His eyes were shadowless and bright, his brows unlined…he didn't even have smile lines around his eyes yet. He was just seventeen!
Harry's eyes flicked to Fleur, who wasn't dating Bill yet; to Viktor, who rose in Hermione's opinion every day, and he worried.
Harry tried to shake the oppressive feeling that there was somehow more he could be doing.
Instead, having said his piece, he rested silently on his stool and fiddled with the hagstone, Luna's luckstone, that rested on his breastbone and wished desperately that he could have snuck in a dose of liquid luck somehow.
Early afternoon shifted to mid-afternoon, the audience stands filled up, and Harry's paranoia that he'd forgotten to do something vital grew.
Fleur, Viktor, Cedric all retreated to separate corners of the tent to best prepare for what they thought was to come, and each focused inwards on themselves, leaving Harry feeling oddly alone and isolated in the little group of four.
Was he the only one to take the threat seriously, after all he'd said?
(Was he the only one who was used to facing down danger? That it was an assumption for him, whereas it was an anomaly for the others?)
Harry found himself palming his little runestones in his pocket, stroking a thumb over his hagstone, checking his wand holster in a repeated cycle of anxiety as the minutes ticked by.
Sirius, Remus and Mr Lloyd-Elliot would be in the stands now – the lawyer the most concerned with what might be coming. Kreacher and Dobby would be where they were needed. Hermione and Nev would be with the Gryffindors – maybe near the Quidditch team, they'd been kind of adopted vicariously through Harry.
The twins would definitely be selling their trinkets: they'd made little animated champions to buy, and enchanted flags in the different school colours. Percy would be shadowing Mr Lloyd-Elliot, now that Harry thought about it. He'd also be worried, but not because he knew what Harry knew. He'd be worried because Percy was always worried because he was a good, kind kid.
The thought of the people he loved being out there in the stands, so close and yet so far away, had Harry feeling oddly adrift. Anchorless in the face of what was to come.
The smooth surface of the hagstone was oddly smooth under his thumb. He was used to being alone, anyway. And Luna had given him luck, in her own way. She knew enough – somehow – to worry for him and he wished she didn't. That was enough.
Finally an official came into the tent to call them all, and Harry found himself lined up in front of the huge green maze, ears ringing in the roar of sound and his heart racing a mile a minute.
"—second after Harry Potter, the Boy-Who-Lived, of course," Ludo Bagman's voice was obnoxiously loud, "which places our one and only...I mean, one of our great Hogwarts champions in at first place! We all saw Potter in the last tasks, where he racked up that incredible collection of points and saved a sweet damsel in distress while he was at it! What guts! What verve! Now, Potter is most famous for his incredible survival against He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named as a toddler, and more recently as a political machine, lone voice of reason against injustice, school leader and sometime-teacher, and an up-and-coming quidditch player, whose flying we have been privilege to see—"
Harry tuned the commentating out to glance at his companions.
In a scraggly line, the others were also showing signs of stress.
Together, the four of them lined up shoulder to shoulder and faced down the towering maze and the onslaught of spectator sound so loud it felt like a wall was hitting them.
The Final Task.
Grumbling in complaint, his stomach was a cold, tight knot. Harry leaned his weight left onto one foot, then right, then left again before switching to simply shuffling nervously.
He found himself wiping his damp hands down the side of his robes and swallowed loudly.
Left of Harry in their motley line, Viktor was also nervous. His face was set and drawn, as stoic as always but that sense of confidence he'd always had was absent now. With the familiarity that he'd gained with the quidditch star throughout the year, Harry could tell he was unsettled. The stern set of Viktor's eyes was lined extra deep. The way he was rocking on the balls of his feet – just barely enough to been seen if you knew what to look for – revealed his tension, the loosening up of his body for action but, with Harry's years of experience now, he knew that Viktor was overdoing it a bit. It was the energy of nerves, not of readiness.
Just down from Viktor, Cedric stood worried and guilty. He was gnawing at his lip and blinking rapidly, his eyes flitting around the stands as if searching for his dad, or looking for guidance where guidance didn't exist. Behind his back, one hand picked at a nail of the other in an obvious nervous tick. Whether it was what Harry had said just before, or whether the significance of the task was only just now dawning on him, Cedric looked like he was only just realising what he'd got himself into. He was in for a rude shock, the poor bastard.
Harry had seen the boy with his father in the morning. Merlin, but the man was stupid. Still bragging about Cedric's cleverness, his spellwork, his bravery, and all Cedric had wanted was quiet support and the understanding that if he didn't win, his parents would still be proud. He'd come so far, after all. He didn't need the Championship to make his father stand tall.
Cedric wasn't gunning for the win anymore or Harry missed his guess. He wondered how Diggory senior would react when Cedric failed to win and – if Harry's plan worked – no one died. Would the braggart still speak so loudly if he realised what was at risk?
Then, at the far end of their lineup, Fleur stood out visibly with her bright, glorious hair that – Harry did a double take and rubbed his eyes - the ever-so-tiny, illusory flames that were running up and down her braid were magic, thankfully, not literal.
As he squinted, the glow of her came into better focus, and Harry saw Fleur's elongated nails again, and the way that the tendons on her hands were standing out.
She was furious, by the looks of things, which would probably be good for her Third Task prospects and if she lived through the evening – he'd done his best; he'd tried to plan for everything – then Ludo Bagman would be in for a rude awakening.
The wizard was still talking. "—very attractive witch she is too, and so charming. They don't make British girls like that, is all I'm saying—"
Harry winced at Bagman's poor decisions and turned back to the maze.
It rose – tall and dark, thickly green and foreboding, and shimmering in complex magic – before him.
By the time Bagman had whipped the audience up into the peak of a cacophonic frenzy, the sun was barely hovering over the horizon and the shadows of the maze hedges were long and dark.
Harry had given up his Time Turner – kept safely wherever Professor McGonagall was standing – and felt naked without it. His wool cloak, he'd left in the tent, leaving only the jumper he'd inexpertly enchanted with safety magic to keep him warm. It shone a dim, golden mage-light over his torso and cast a light glow into the air around him.
The ground was wet enough that the inside of the maze would be slippery with mud.
Ahead, in the shadowed corridor inside the huge hedges, leaves rustled eerily.
"You remember everything?" Harry asked his fellow champions lowly. "Stay alert. Red sparks if you're worried. Apparete if its worse. Don't trust the ministry checks to be safe."
"Mm," Cedric nodded.
"Da."
"Oui," Fleur's eyes stayed fixed on the leafy entrance.
Harry felt his nerves taut; his blood was racing through his body and the pounding of his heartbeat sent surges of adrenaline through every blood vessel until he felt each nerve tingle.
He rocked forward on the balls of his feet while Bagman's enhanced voice explained who'd run first at the whistle.
"Safety first," Harry reminded.
Fleur was loosening up, stretching her joints in the corner of his eyes.
"Can't believe I'm bloody well about to do this," Cedric muttered.
The maze beckoned.
The whistle blew.
Harry's muscles surged. He powered forward.
While the maze - twenty whole feet tall - was as dark and treacherous as Harry remembered, his new vision cast the whole experience in a new light. He was surrounded by charms and enchantments, glowing in rainbow colours and shifting hues. Harry didn't need the reminder that he was lost in a storm of magic, but then the roars of the audience cut off as soon as he entered between the rows of hedging, and he stifled a shiver of remembrance anyway. The ground was as slippery as he'd been afraid of.
The leaves rustled innocently enough as he whipped his wand out and jogged down that first short passageway, but Harry only heard in them ominous predictions for his night.
He reached the first crossroads. He turned right, and hid a shudder as the hedges behind him shivered, shuffled and stretched to block out the gap he had passed through. Okay, so the walls of the maze moved; he'd known that...
Two turns later, Harry found his first challenge. How in Merlin's name had the organisers managed to persuade a goblin to take part in this farce? And why was he holding a…contract!?
Four long minutes later, and his mouth was dry from talking.
"I refuse to sign this unless you specify this clause," Harry protested to his...opponent's?... sullen, cut-throat sneer. "No decent manager would leave such a promise open-ended. Why, you could hold me responsible for that promise after the ruddy tournament ends, if you left it like that. I don't agree to that. But you want my signature."
"Hngrr," the goblin – not a Gringotts one, from the looks of his overalls, but just as savvy as them – groaned. "Not as stupid as you look, are you? That's all of 'em you caught. Alright then. Go ahead."
With a flourish, Harry twirled his conjured quill and crossed out two lines in order to add a time limit of—he nibbled the end of the feather—"so long as party b, henceforth referred to as Harry Potter physically remains within the hedges of the 1994-1995 Triwizard Tournament's, Third Task's, maze, and not a linear moment longer."
"And now, your autograph."
Harry signed, then cast that clever charm that stopped others from repurposing his signature. Mr Lloyd-Elliot needed a raise.
"You may pass," the goblin growled out.
Harry took off with a run.
He passed the jobberknolls with no trouble, snuck by the doxy-infested gateway, and was congratulating himself on making up for lost time when something clicked audibly as he rounded another corner. A damned sphinx, gold fur and all, locked a gate behind him, her feline tail swishing with interest as he turned.
"Damn." Harry swore as she paced closer to him. "You aren't going to make me answer a riddle, are you? Because I'm useless at—"
She – obviously a 'she' – sat down sinuously, so gracefully as to be silent.
"That is indeed why I wait here," the large cat-like creature told him with an accented voice, her human-like head nevertheless suiting her slow, blinking cat-eyes as her large golden eyes stared down at him. "Are you prepared, child? You cannot retreat, but you still have three options. Answer wrongly, and I shall attack. Answer correctly, and I will make way to let you pass. Or answer not at all, and you may wait patiently and safely for the Task to be completed by some other, more impressive champion, and leave when the maze is resolved."
"Merlin. Go ahead then." Harry sheathed his wand and steadied his legs. The sun was setting now, and the sphinx loomed over him like an oncoming storm.
More adrenaline surged, and he fought to slow his breath to better focus on the sounds slipping out through the sphinx's lips.
"Take heed, then make your guess," the woman's voice said.
"Less weight than a finger, and light in the air,
Sound heralds my coming, so better beware.
I'm less than a human, yet quicker of eye.
You might want to catch me, but better not try."
Harry paused, mind working quickly. His heart beat staccato, racing faster as the confusion hit first, but he fought through it to find calm, to find focus. All those extra years of experience didn't really help, but runes and divination and his own wildly varying research had broadened his mind, and his occlumency sent his thoughts speeding down mental connections.
"Hang on," Harry bit his knuckle. "Let me take that line by line.
"Small, right, and 'light' implies weight – possibly also actual flight, but you haven't made that unambiguous. We hear it coming, fine…a cry, a buzz, and humans don't like it. That leaves lots of birds and most insects, particularly if we take into account various fears and phobias that people might have.
"'Less than human' could mean so many things, but in this case perhaps age, wisdom, intelligence…but 'quicker of eye' implies you're faster too, or at least uncatchable. And we shouldn't try to catch you, but you haven't made it clear whether that's because it's impossible, or because we'll get hurt." Hands on hips, Harry stared at the sphinx far more confidently than perhaps he should. "Hang on one moment! That could literally be so many things! A bee. A wasp. A billywig. A mosquito. Glumbumbles. Doxies! Should I keep going?"
Still sitting yet towering high and huge above him, the sphinx opened her mouth before her brows collapsed into frown lines. "Akh, are you sure?"
"Yeah," Harry nodded. "I mean, anything tiny, flying and bitey would fit. Fleas – I have this one friend, right? He absolutely comes out in hives if a flea's walked through the common room. Horseflies are terrible around here, but not nearly as bad as the midges."
Awkwardly aggrieved, the sphinx settled lower in her haunches. "Shuu. I did my best, alright? Everything was changed on me a few months ago. I wasn't given much time to come up with these things, and I don't know much about Scotland to begin with. English isn't even my first language, child. Or my second. It seems subtleties were lost things translation…the implications are different in your language, I see."
Harry felt compelled to apologise. "Er, sorry about that. I've been having trouble myself picking up German and, well, I guess I've started looking into French. But I haven't even begun looking into the cultures and they're already hard enough."
The sphinx scoffed. "It was an impossible task, I now see. Quality simply takes time. No one considers the 'beasts' when they put on an international show, do they?"
Harry shrugged. "To be fair, no one in charge seems to have considered the champions either. Er, did I pass?"
"Oh, I suppose."
She stood up with feline grace and waved Harry on to another gate, which had suddenly clicked open.
"Perhaps we can discuss your Scotland culture more after this farce is over."
Harry grabbed for his wand again, and raced on.
He passed through a golden mist easily enough, and crashed his way through a small, purple cloud that buffeted him about.
He set five cauldrons alight using different fire-charms for each.
He terrified a boggart, calmed a runespoor nest with a sentence, charmed a salamander to sleep and shot coloured balls of light into corresponding targets that flew.
The sunset colours glowed, faded, left.
He wondered how the others were going.
He didn't have time to ponder about it long.
The acromantula, he made foxtrot away down a side-corridor.
The fwoopers he ran past, the blast-ended skrewts he bounced up and over the maze walls, and the…
Harry stumbled, blood turning to ice, as he rounded another corner.
Ruddy Rowena and the horse she rode in on. Who on Earth thought it was a good idea to bring a troll into the school tournament?
Now sweaty and mud-covered, hair mused, and breath coming in short pants, Harry nevertheless had time to snort a laugh. Was Dumbledore secretly trying to make up for all his absences these last few—No. Harry hadn't fought a troll in this timeline.
He distracted it with a hastily conjured, half-roasted whole boar, and dashed round the corner and through a narrow passage before the thing decided eating Harry would be more fun.
That little niggle in the back of his head – that Crouch Junior wasn't around to clear his way this time; that he had to actually beat all of the other champions to the Cup; that ruining Voldemort's plans might be his undoing – had Harry more and more flustered as he kept turning corners, expecting to be at the centre of the maze, and kept still not being there.
His heart was in his throat, his stomach was ice, and his fingers were trembling for real around the wood of his wand when finally, finally, Harry popped through an archway and spotted the Cup on a stone pedestal mere feet away.
Finally, he was at the centre of the maze.
Harry paused, his heart thumping in his chest, the pulse in his neck racing uncomfortably and took extra time to make sure that his breath hissed through his open mouth silently.
No need to rush the moment, to reveal himself to any…There were no acromantulas. That could only be good.
He began to heave out a sigh.
Then, a rustle.
Harry's head jerked left harshly. Wand up and out.
The sky was dark now, so the figure cast no shadow: Fleur.
His breath resumed.
Her glorious hair was mused, face smeared with something dark and streaky.
Mud? Blood?
She was limping and her clothes dishevelled – something had bitten a hole in her jacket!? – but when she saw him and twitched alert, Harry could tell from the gleam in her eyes that she was still in the fight. She hadn't given up. She wanted to win.
They shared a cool look.
He saw visions of Cedric crumbling, cold voices saying 'Kill the spare'. He felt the pain and fear and rage of it all for the millionth time.
He refused to live through that again.
"Sorry," Harry shrugged, and accioed the Cup.