A Chance Encounter
Chapter 18
-Harry-
Walking in step with his girlfriend and their fellow Champions, Harry glanced about the admittedly impressive Arena created for the second task. Given that the four Fortifications were spaced so far apart, and often in places where tradition seating wouldn't work, the schools had gotten creative.
A massive floating semicircular arena, letting those spectating view the sieges from above. Furthermore, it was apparently enchanted to portkey to the skies over each of the fortifications once the prior siege was completed and scores were given.
"Hello ladies and gentlemen!" Bagman's voice boomed out as the commentator began, charms protecting the hearing of those closest to the ex-beater, "And welcome, to the Second Task of the Tri-Wizard Tournament!" the crowd roared, eager for sport and spectacle.
Bagman grinned, letting the crowd work themselves up a bit before he continued, "Indeed! Now, for the first task we got to see how well these Champions do on the attack. But how good are they when the tables are turned? That's what we aim to find out today! This stadium will take us to four different fortifications, one for each Champion. At the end of the first task, they each received a clue as to where their fort was and have been given that time till today to prepare. Let's see the fruit of their labors, shall we?!" at a gesture from Bagman, the enchantments were triggered as the entire stadium warped, vanishing from its current location till it now rested high in the mountains near Feldcroft and Irondale.
Leaning forward as Cedric took a broom and flew down to his fort, Harry wondered what the Hufflepuff's plan was. The area didn't look that different than how it was when they'd first found the place. Apart from the Hufflepuff banners at any rate, something a certain yellow clad portion of the audience seemed to enjoy too.
"Today, the same aurors who defended the Keep from the first task will be leading the assault, and I think they'd like to give our champions a little payback, how about you?!" Bagman shouted as the crowd roared eagerly, the Bulgarian aurors heading down to wait for the signal to start their attack.
Finally, with a canon blast, the aurors charged.
And then the mountain began to shake. Dirt flew into the air as the various boulders began to rumble and rise, revealing themselves to be buried Golems, ready to defend their creator.
"Huh, impressive." Harry blinked at the horde of a dozen golems meeting the Auror's charge. They were careful not to be too harmful, but the Aurors were distinctly having to work to get past them. It didn't help that Cedric kept sending curses into the fray and transfigured lose rocks and broken Golem Pieces into animals to further add to the chaos.
"Impressive work." Viktor nodded, "I am not ze best with Transfiguration myself, let alone living transfiguration or enchantments like that."
"I'm just disappointed that he doesn't have any giant Honey Badgers for house pride." Harry snickered before blinking "Wait, never mind, spoke to soon." The aurors attacking the fort were far less appreciative of the 'show' than Harry or the Hufflepuffs watching were.
It was close, and a few Aurors even made it into the fort, but the timer ended before any Auror could claim the 'treasure' of Cedric's fortification. As the Hufflepuff Champion flew back up to the arena alongside the Bulgarian Aurors, Harry and the others cheered loudly for their comrade.
-Dumbledore-
Straightening his hat as the Arena finished its relocation, Dumbledore glanced up at the scoreboard that showed the marks each Champion had received for their tasks, including the altered scores from the first tasks since his opinion was deemed 'invalid' for them. The ICW had seen fit to overrule him and replaced Harry and Delacour's ones with eights, putting them in the lead for a total score of forty-five and forty-four respectively.
Now, Diggory had been given a seven by Karkaroff, much like in the first task, while he, Percy Weasley standing in for Crouch, and Maxime gave the boy eights due to some aurors getting into the fort even if they didn't reach the treasure. Bagman gave the Hufflepuff a ten for the spectacle of the Golems and the giant Honey Badger. That, combined with the first task points, left Diggory with a total of eighty-four.
Now it was Krum's turn to perform.
Glancing down at the Fortification just east of 'San Bakar's Tower', Albus frowned as he couldn't see any notable signs to the common eye of any degree of preparation. Had Krum located the wrong fort? Given the confident grin on the Bulgarian Seeker's face as he, and the French Aurors, flew down he knew that couldn't be it.
Finally, the canon blast sounded, and a hail of spells and curses rained towards the Fort that sat nestled in the back of a chokepoint.
None of them came close. Each spell hit a suddenly rippling wall of light as one of the single most intricate ward Schemes Albus had ever seen became visible. It encircled the fortification as Krum stood tall on the battlements.
Spell after spell flew, aurors tried charging the glowing barrier, but nothing worked. He'd have to get his hands on the boy's ward scheme to utilize for himself. If the Bulgarian boy could create something like this, then it would become truly flawless once Albus himself started improving on it.
While Diggory had been a fast-paced round, the Hufflepuff constantly casting and directing, this was much more sedate. Krum never moved an inch as he stood imperiously upon the ramparts, simply watching as the aurors worked to get through the Master level ward scheme. By the time the round came to an end, nobody had even managed to come close to the gate.
-Hermione-
Scowling, Hermione watched as Fleur flew down to her fort. Unlike the first two, which were good defensible locations, this one was clearly meant as an insult. Granted, an island was hard to reach…on foot. But Witches and Wizards could easily conjure boats or just fly. Not to mention that Veela being known as creatures of fire, meant that much water was probably a hinderance.
While the scores could be altered after the fact if they were deemed unfairly biased, this wasn't something that could be changed in advance. A glance up at the scoreboard showed that Krum's scores from the last task wouldn't help things either.
Dumbledore, Karkaroff, and Percy had given Viktor perfect tens for the Master level warding scheme. Maxime had given the Bulgarian a nine, probably due to seemingly only having the one plan and no backups if it failed. Then Bagman gave Viktor a six, much to the displeasure of the crowd. The former quiditch player had apparently been bored watching Krum just stand there while the French aurors hammered in futility against his wards.
"Relax 'Mione." Ron put a hand on her shoulder, "Fleur's got this. You see how confident she looks? She's got a plan."
"You're positive?" Hermione glanced back down at Fleur who was entering the surprisingly overgrown Fort, the various wild animals on the island not running from her or trying to attack.
"Trust me, she's got something 'big' planned." Ron grinned, eyes flitting about the upcoming 'battlefield'.
"I guess you'd know best." She huffed playfully. While she was still the better of the two at academia, she could easily admit that Ron was by far the better strategist. The fact that he regularly trounced her, and everyone else, at Chess was only further proof of that.
Using her binoculars, she could see Fleur sitting in a meditative stance, the various animals focusing on her and 'listening' to something judging by how they were swaying. More and more birds seemed to be flying that way by the second as the British Aurors prepared to charge, the contingent all waiting on brooms.
The second the canon blast went off the aurors charged, and the animals swarmed.
Wind swirled and howled as the birds screeched, startling the aurors as they harried the flying forces. The toads on the island made a wall of purple flesh, croaking angrily at the would-be invaders.
And then the lake began to roil, before Tentacles started grabbing the aurors. Tim, the 'giant Squid' of the lake who she was positive was actually some variant of Fresh Water Kraken had apparently made its way through the various connected waterways into Marunweem Lake and now fought at Fleur's command.
"Told you she had a plan!" Ron laughed over the wind, holding Hermione's hand as they cheered at the spectacle. While Cedric had 'minions' as well his were conjured and he had to directly control their every action, or at the very least give direct commands. With these it looked more like Fleur was asking the wild animals for aide and they were helping as they saw fit to.
"Her bird form!" Hermione's eyes widened as she figured it out, "Veela don't just have the fire and the allure, they have that bird form. Maybe she has magic tied to 'the wild' in general?"
"That would do it." Ron laughed, "They tried to screw her over and ended up giving her the ultimate battlefield advantage. Bet you a sickle that Madame Maxime let Dumbledore think he was getting away with something sneaky knowing this would be the result."
"I don't take suckers bets Ron." Hermione rolled her eyes as her boyfriend pouted adorably.
-Fleur-
Sitting next to her boyfriend, Fleur preened smugly as she got settled back in. Up on the scoreboard, she saw her total score tied with Viktor's. Madame Maxime, Bagman, and the Weasley standing in for Crouch all gave her perfect tens for the impressive display she had given despite the 'disadvantage' she'd been placed in. Karkaroff had at the very least given her an eight rather than a seven like last time, although that might have been to annoy Dumbledore. Speaking of, the old bastard had given her a six. Just high enough that he could probably argue against bias scoring given Karkaroff given everyone but Viktor a seven in the first task.
Feeling the Stadium start to thrum with magic as it got ready to head to the fourth and final fort, Fleur wondered what Harry had done with it. His had been the most open and exposed but also had a lot of area to work with.
With a whirl of magic, the floating stadium moved and when it stopped Fleur was left gaping. Harry had molded the stone around his fort using the magical arrays on his arms. Spires, and walls and barricades as he'd created a far more secure fortress than the little wooden ones they'd been given.
She couldn't help but laugh at the various statues he'd made of her as well as the fact that his Castle's 'Gargoyles' bore a striking resemblance to Viktor and Cedric.
"You're going to pay for that later." Cedric grumbled good naturedly as Harry cackled and flew down to his fort, the British Auror contingent that he'd be fighting gaping at the structure.
When the canon blast began the aurors charged, most quickly finding the ground was trapped too as pit falls began appearing whenever an Auror would step on them. Given that there were anti apparition wards up it was quite the comedy of errors on the aurors part.
To make things even harder on the various Aurors, she could see Harry hurling bolts of raw magic from the markings on his hands, having filled up his 'reservoir' for today and the red robed witches and wizards were struggling to deal with premade muggle style traps and magic that they'd never seen before.
"He's made quite the fort." Viktor noted, smirking in amusement at the chaos occurring down bellow "Perhaps he and I could do business together. He makes a location and I ward it."
"Just make sure he stops putting my face on the Gargoyles." Cedric grunted.
"But you're so scary." Fleur pouted, the trio falling into laughter and teasing as the timer eventually ran out for the Aurors. The scores went up and, much like with her own performance, Dumbledore marked it with a six, stoically ignoring the boos of the crowd who knew what he was doing.
Karkaroff also gave an eight, seemingly enjoying being able to act like the 'bigger man' between himself and Dumbledore.
Maxime, Bagman, and Weasley all gave perfect Tens for the impressive preparation. In the end, it put Harry's total as eighty-nine, one point in the lead above herself and Viktor with Cedric trailing not far behind.
-Amelia Bones-
"So, tell me of his status healer Roswell." Amelia sighed, rubbing her temples as she walked alongside the St. Mungos Mediwitch toward Crouch's room. The man's first statement after the treatment had begun and he was no longer shaking like a drug addict in withdrawal was that his son had been alive and held him under the Imperius.
Fudge had caught wind of this, stated the man was still deluded, and threw out the entire report that had been taken. She was here trying to get a new one to hopefully get started.
"He's still terrified of everything around him, has started questioning every healer who comes in of being his attacker under Polyjuice, and still insists his son was the assailant." Healer Roswell sighed, "The legilimency team couldn't find anything either. The overexposure to the Imperius has his memories a chaotic jumble that's difficult for us to navigate."
"Of course it is." Amelia sighed as they reached Crouch's room, opening the door only for Roswell's scream to carry throughout St. Mungos. The room was crawling with Vines, Crouch's corpse blue from where he'd been strangled by the Devil's snare coming out of a pot.
"Lumos Solemn!" Amelia thrust her wand out, using the bright light to keep the deadly vines from escaping the room, "Roswell, get more aurors here now!" she barked as the horrified woman bolted. This was supposed to just be a simple questioning. Now it was a murder investigation.
-Omake-
-Harry-
Smirking, Harry felt the arena stop moving as they got to where his Fort was. The crowd started whispering in confusion when they couldn't see anything.
"Mr. Potter, where is your Fortification?" Madame Maxime blinked in puzzlement.
"Fidelius charm." Harry smirked, mounting his broom to get down to the fort that only he could see or find, "Can't attack what you can't see!" as he cackled and flew off, he could feel the annoyed glares aimed at his back.
