"The army stands ready, lord," the sci-fi necromancer with the art deco gold face mask announced in his raspy voice. Harry had lost track of the number of times the weirdo had popped up in his dreams over the last year. "They await the gateway, but the ships could begin moving toward the objective through real space…"
"No. Nova would detect travel on that scale," a much deeper voice disagreed from the shadows of the strange cavernlike room. It almost felt like Harry was floating on an asteroid in deep space, which was about par for the course for a dream. But that voice haunted him, for all that he was having trouble placing it. "It's too early for them to interfere."
"Ah, yes, I speak to the Accuser, soon, to turn the Kree against them," the necromancer almost cackled. "Ebony Maw is in position to land and renew the charade. We could seize both Earth and Vanaheim at the same time!"
"Don't overcommit," the bass voice cautioned, still shrouded. Harry got the impression that the necromancer was looking up at the speaker, as if gazing upon a throne. "The wizards would be very useful to me, but the Stones are what matter. Are you sure he'll give them up?"
"Our 'ally' still fights the scepter, but it's had cycles to work on him. He will do what is best for you despite his own ambitions. Perhaps he will regret the throne we have earned him once we take them back, but he will rule atop our own apparatus and have no choice but to continue. Asgard will have to fight him for one of their precious realms, just as they will try to retake Vanaheim."
"And with Asgard and Nova distracted, the rest of the work can begin," the voice from the shadows pronounced. "Perhaps we can even draw out Odin himself and, with his death, unmake an old injustice…"
Harry woke as that dream faded. It was interesting that his weird sci-fi zombie dreams were starting to mention Asgard and Vanaheim. He figured he was just anxious over the realm-hopping. It was the day of the final task, after all.
They'd gotten the warning the night before, and thought that the convergence would be stable long enough to wait until the next evening, to let as many fans as possible make their way in on the train. So Harry had the day to "prepare," for all that it wasn't useful because they still hadn't given away much about the maze they were going to visit. At least it was Friday and he had classes, so he wouldn't have nothing to do but stress out all day. It was Pasture-Month 11, which worked out to basically the beginning of May back on Earth. What were the odds that something else crazy would happen to him in May?
He had to admit to himself that they were pretty damn good.
"How much have you let your guard down with those other kids?" Moody asked him as he was leaving defense class at the end of the afternoon.
Harry's head had increasingly been in the impending task, so the question brought him up short. "Uh… a lot, if I'm honest."
"Good that you're honest," the salty old auror nodded. "There's something off about all of them, and you need to be ready for them to play for keeps out there. Maybe they can be friends you can trust some day, but tonight they're all going for that cup. And you still don't know who wanted you in the tournament in the first place or why."
His reflex was to say, "We are friends," but he knew the paranoid old man well enough at this point to know that would get the man's catchphrase yelled in his face. This was a man that had checked himself out of the hospital with fresh curse wounds because he didn't feel safe asleep around healers. So instead he admitted, "I'm okay if they win. I don't think any of them would really try to hurt me to do it."
"Going to be a lot of chaos in there. You've gotten by working together in the last couple tasks so you're not used to how dangerous it would be if you actually tried to work against each other. What if the elf throws a fireball? The witch hits you with whatever dark magic he can't keep out of his spells? It would be very easy to get seriously hurt. Constant vigilance, Potter. You need to get out of this unmaimed." He tapped his prosthetics one after the other, "Don't want to be all chewed up like me before you're even an adult."
"Thanks for the warning, sir," Harry agreed, teen bravado at least a little undercut by the demonstration. He supposed that magical healing really would have a hard time with burns or dark magic wounds.
It was easy to forget by the time he was queued up in the pavilion tent with the other three a couple hours later. He'd spent so much time with his fellow challengers over the year he'd honestly been neglecting some of his other relationships. Cedric was the cool older kid that he'd kind of known around Hogwarts for years but was finally getting to hang out with, and he had another whole year at Hogwarts. Viktor and Hermione still seemed to be doing well, romantically, and he was still set on joining Tony's racing team so Harry was sure they'd be friends after the tournament. And Fleur… well, Harry still was trying to convince himself he was okay that they'd just had a weird thing and he'd have to get used to not seeing her all the time when she was back on Alfheim.
He was not going to be okay. He had it bad and had been studiously compartmentalizing about it since the Yule Ball.
"We're not really going to try to kill each other out there, are we?" he asked them, shifting uncomfortably in his tournament robes. He'd managed to fit the fireproofed orange outfit on over his enchanted armor, and it was a little much. At least the runes were keeping him from overheating with so much clothing on in the warm spring evening. He'd put in his contacts for the final task, just as he'd used them for the second one. No sense risking a monster knocking his glasses off, just to be a little more comfortable.
"Not like you need to worry about it, you're going to be miles ahead of the rest of us," Cedric joked, tapping his cane a little nervously. He was also wearing his robes from the first task, but had strapped a belt of pouches around his waist and hung a potions bandolier across his shoulder.
"I need to win," Fleur said simply. She hadn't bothered wearing the first-task robes, instead bringing a set of formidable-looking silvery armor of her own. It flickered in a way that made it clear that it would probably enhance her illusions, maybe letting her turn almost as invisible as Harry could. Plus it was quite form-fitting and distracting. Her half-joking comment of, "Just don't make me go zrough you," was enough for Harry's eyes to snap from her curves to her piercingly-blue eyes in shock.
Maybe Moody had been right. She had a lot staked on this. A lot more than he did. And he would be trusting a lot that whatever their thing was, it would be more important to her than winning.
"I vill try not to hurt any of you," Viktor was the one person who tried to mollify Harry. "Though it is hard enough that I am in last place and not as fast as the rest of you." He'd also foregone the orange robes for a basic black set of fatigues that seemed like Eastern European military surplus. Harry could make out runes stitched in metallic black thread, and the Bulgarian had a dark web belt with multiple canvas pouches. Of all of them, Harry wouldn't put it past him to have brought some dark elf tech this time.
"I just want to make sure we're all still friends after this," Harry explained, a little lamely.
"It shouldn't be a problem," Cedric shrugged. "I can date my quidditch rival. We can be friends even if we do what we need to while we're trying to win."
"I guess so," Harry agreed, but didn't like the look in the boy's blue eyes. He was probably just psyching himself out, after his second year. He'd kicked that Stone into the void between worlds. At least Viktor's gaze was a reassuring brown.
Bagman didn't give them too much more time to dwell, stepping into the tent a moment later. "Everyone ready? Convergence is just outside. Harry through first when we sound the gong, then Fleur, then Cedric, then Viktor on each successive gong. First one to touch the trophy is the winner! Questions?"
"Monsters?" Viktor asked.
"Right! That's all sorted out with the natives. They're sort of intelligent? Try not to seriously injure them if you don't have to. Might cause an international incident."
"Are they going to be trying to seriously injure us?" Cedric checked.
"Just slow you down and make it interesting, I'm sure."
"So, hypothetically, if I had a broom…" Harry checked.
Bagman shook his head. "I wouldn't try it. We're having to fly the drones well above the maze so they don't get swatted out of the sky. I doubt you'd fare any better."
"And if ve get injured?"
"We'll have people on standby. And send up some sparks or something if you get overwhelmed and need help. Safety concerns have been addressed! Well, got to get to it. Harry at the first gong!" With that, he let himself out before they could ask any more questions.
"Okay, well… good luck, everyone," Harry said, trying to fend off the sudden impression that everything was about to go very wrong. He tried to catch Fleur's eye again, but she was withdrawn, psyching herself up for her own preparation. Cedric gave him a distracted nod and Viktor, who had the most time to get ready, a grim, close-mouthed smile.
Then the gong rang and he was out of the tent.
The convergence had done everyone the favor of opening up in the middle of the quidditch stadium, the amphitheater's seating more full than he'd ever seen it. An almost palpable roar shook him as he ran out onto the pitch, the excitement of the fans hitting him from all angles. He saw the judges set up across from him, for all that actual judgment wouldn't be needed since the winner was whoever got to the cup first. Crouch was back instead of Percy, and Harry was surprised that the event had rated the Minister making his way out. They must have figured out how to use magic to duplicate the projected image from the camera drones, as several white sheets levitated around the stadium, projecting a dark forest scene barely visible in the dwindling evening light on Vanaheim. They'd see more as the sun fully set.
Harry spotted the same scene ahead of him as he plunged headlong through the rip between planets. In a moment he went from the slightly-chilly, piney smell of an evening on Vanaheim to somewhere warmer, more like a jungle. He smelled the sea, almost swore he could hear it somewhere not too far away, but was charging headlong into a wall of trees.
No, wait, it was bamboo, denser and higher than anything he'd ever seen.
Harry glanced up and spotted the slight flicker of the elven cameras as they lifted above the canopy. Against the stars of the night sky, he'd probably miss the spy drones if he hadn't been looking for them. Wait. Were those stars familiar? The gibbous moon definitely was. Did the convergence take him to Earth?
He kicked himself for not packing his phone, assuming he'd go to some other fantasy planet. The GPS might have actually given him an edge. Grumbling about Bagman not providing the full heads-up, he began to run forward, vaguely sensing the tracking charm ahead that he'd given the organizers to place with the cup.
Ahead of him there was only one path into the bamboo jungle, and he charged down it, footfalls loud in the otherwise quiet night. It seemed like it was late enough that even the bugs had gone to sleep, or maybe he just wasn't familiar with the sounds that a bamboo forest should make. His eyes slowly adjusted, the moonlight bright enough that he didn't feel like he needed to risk a magical light to spotlight himself for any protectors right away. But it was weird that they'd specified that this was a maze, when what he could make out in the dim light was a laser-straight path, wide enough for a car, that seemed to plunge basically in the right direction. He could maybe squeeze or chop through the bamboo to either side, but with a path taking him where he needed to go…
What was the trick? Was there going to eventually be some Henson-puppet caterpillar to tell him he was taking things for granted?
He got maybe a hundred yards—and thought he heard the second gong even through the convergence behind him setting Fleur loose—before the trick became apparent. Almost as if the gong had upset it, the bamboo began to audibly rustle, a tangible susurration of leaves rubbing against nearby stalks. And an approaching clacking from behind. Harry glanced back to see the trail closing up behind him, the path he was standing on zipping closed, massive bamboo poles whacking against each other like a forest-scale xylophone.
He sped up. The clacking sped up. He slowed to a walk. It seemed to slow but not stop. It was catching up to him, gradually and implacably. And the looming shadow of the bamboo forest ahead wasn't exactly closing, but he realized he was seeing a corner, finally. A very precisely right-angled corner.
"I take the maze with me. And have to keep up with the hole. Got it," Harry mused, picking up his speed. He suddenly wished he'd worn fewer layers. Hopefully there was something in the armor to deal with puddles of sweat leaking out.
Sprinting and trying to keep a sense of his tracking spell proved to be an actual challenge. Very rarely, a corner would be a T-intersection where he'd have to choose a direction. And he was considering whether it might start to make sense to try to cut through the bamboo as he was no longer getting anything like a straight shot to the cup. But the clacking from behind was intimidating, and getting ever-closer. He definitely felt like the forest was deliberately closing up exactly fast enough to stress him out.
"This is dumb," he finally said to himself between heavy breaths, realizing that the maze was actually herding him fully off course, and hearing the pounding of surf against cliffs distressingly nearby. Was the maze just a way to try to shove him into the ocean? "Screw this." Summoning a sword of energy and putting some extra magic into it so it would burn like one of Seamus' whips, he hacked to his right and entered the hole he'd made just as the maze pocket washed closed behind him.
Tony was going to be super jealous that Harry could basically make a lightsaber now. The tech genius hadn't even figured out how to make anything viably close to a lightsaber.
"Off the path," was quieter, the clacking of bamboo receding into the distance as if it had never been trying to keep up with him to begin with. It was also a lot darker, with no clear path to the moonlight. Harry wondered if the spy drones were able to keep up with him. His light came mostly from his glowing orange sword. He tried to slide between the plants more than simply hacking at them, unless he absolutely couldn't fit through otherwise: both because it seemed slower, and because the forest seemed intelligent enough that it might resent him doing a ton of damage.
He shoved and cut his way through the thick growth for what felt like half an hour. Had he lost whatever lead he'd started with, or were the others similarly slowed? Was hacking through directly toward the tracker faster than trying to outsprint the pocket and hope it led him in the right direction? What if he pulled out his broom? Could he stay ahead of the forest closing behind him, or would it even speed up to gain on him at Firebolt speeds?
Almost surprised, he eventually found another pocket, stepping free into the "clearing" that was anything but. Coming out in the middle, he wasn't even sure which direction it was opening and which direction it was closing. Neither direction seemed appreciably pointed toward where he was tracking, so he resigned himself to just taking a quick breather as he crossed the temporary trail before hacking his way in at the other side.
He'd barely hit the middle of the path when the stampede caught him. Charging from his left down the path, a quartet of massive bodies thundered toward him. No matter how much training Harry had in a crisis, the human brain is wired to run from that kind of onslaught: it's what made cavalry so effective for thousands of years. And these things didn't look nearly as delicate as horses. In the moonlight, Harry caught scales, horns, and other strange deviations from what was otherwise a giant horse. The name "ki-rin" popped into his head, from one of the older D&D monster books, but he had no idea if that's what these really were.
Ah, they were herding him the wrong way. He finally spotted the forest closing ahead of him as the beasts closed in from behind. Would it hurt more to get shoved into the bamboo when it was actually smashing together? Clearly the ki-rin didn't think that it would close on their faces, or for some reason had gotten locked on chasing him. What if he could turn this into an advantage?
Trying to time it correctly, he waited for the bamboo to start moving in front of him, hooked a moving shaft with an energy whip, and leaped to allow its sideways momentum to give him an assist gaining height. He had been practicing brachiation some since the paintball debacle, so he only got slightly bruised being slammed into bamboo closing on the other side (fortunately all the layers of clothing and armor helped).
Importantly, he landed square on the back of one of the ki-rin as he came down. He grabbed its oddly-fluffy mane and held on as best he could. It seemed surprised at what he'd done as it rushed headlong into the closing bamboo wall… which opened up just enough to allow it and the other dragon-horses through. Bamboo whipping impossibly close to either side, Harry said, "Sorry for hitching a ride. I'll get out of your hair in a second, but if you could…" he leaned his weight against the mane to try to tilt his unwilling mount back in the direction of the cup.
It actually seemed to be working. The stamping of the beasts was muffled in the dense bamboo and he couldn't really see the other three as the bamboo parted just enough to allow them to continue to charge through. He thought he was bending the arc of their rush toward where he needed to go. And in the press of the forest, the other ones couldn't help the one he was riding knock him off.
But they weren't the only creatures out there.
Just as he thought he was making some real progress, Harry felt something heavy and furry thump into his side and send him sprawling. Fortunately, the bamboo seemed inclined to get out of his way as he fell from the ki-rin, and he managed to roll as he hit the loamy ground. The ki-rin herd continued to charge away, leaving him in a tiny clearing that the bamboo had seemingly created for his confrontation with whatever had knocked him off.
Looking at it, he still wasn't really sure what he was fighting, and it wasn't just the bad lighting.
It was some kind of strange cross between an eagle, a bear, and a… footstool? It didn't seem to have a head, and wasn't even as big as he was. But it arched its back for a fight and flapped its wings dramatically. Oh, wait, it had two pairs of wings and they were rainbow colored. And six legs? It was… oddly cute. Luna would almost certainly want one. Harry settled into a fighting stance but wasn't sure if the thing was going to keep after him. He'd feel really bad about beating it up, but not half as bad as he'd feel if it kicked his ass.
"You, uh, have to fight me, or can we just call it a draw?" he asked.
The little thing trilled. It made a high-pitched growl. He had no idea where the sounds were even coming from, but they were adorable. Finally, it flapped its two pairs of wings once more as if deciding to claim a victory and then strode off into the bamboo, the forest opening and closing behind it. Harry might have pursued to make use of the seeming desire of the forest to allow the creatures to roam freely, but it was headed in the wrong direction. And he'd feel pretty awful just trying to pick it up and carry it in the right direction… for all that doing so would probably be very cuddly.
Reorienting himself after his strange encounter, he started to squeeze through the bamboo toward his objective. He wondered if the tournament organizers had expected more racing down the trails and fighting with the defending creatures, and less trailblazing in the dark.
It felt like another hour of hacking through the bamboo, for all that it was probably less, before he had another encounter. He'd made it across one more temporary path through the forest without getting stampeded again, and as he saw another one open up in front of him, he heard fighting down the clearing. In the glow of their magic, he could make out Fleur and Viktor both moving basically toward him to keep ahead of the closing path as they fought… one another?
"'arry!" she called, spotting him. "Viktor's gone crazy!" She narrowly caught a blast of magical orange-and-purple light on her own shimmering shield. She was in full battle form, hair standing up into feathers, and she flung a globe of flame at Viktor.
For his own part, Viktor managed to dodge the flame but said nothing, merely making a snarling face in the moonlight and charging up another attack. His fatigues looked like they'd taken a beating in the forest, loose threads of black cloth giving him a hazy silhouette in the gloom.
Harry didn't even think. His friends were fighting, but the girl he liked was making a plausible case, and Viktor wasn't disagreeing. Maybe she'd just played hardball and he'd gotten pissed off after already being injured, or maybe something had gotten to him. Regardless, Harry had seen what that dark magic suffusing Viktor's magic could do to objects, and didn't want to see it used on Fleur. He got a shield up and slid in between the two of them, deflecting Viktor's next attack. With the reprieve, Fleur managed to nail him with the same blast of knockout magic she'd used on the dragon in the first task, and the big Bulgarian slumped to the turf, unconscious.
"Why was he–" Harry began, but noticed that the shimmer of Fleur's magic that washed off of Viktor as he fell was still present around his mouth: as if she'd already nailed him with a spell that would silence him. It seemed an odd choice for a dueling spell, unless she'd assumed he needed to use an incantation for some of his attacks that he might use against her…
"Zank you for ze 'elp, 'arry," she said, and he felt the cold silver of one of her knives appear under his chin, as she wrapped him in the mockery of a lover's embrace from behind. Her hand brushed his face in the process, but, instead of opening the empathic connection between them to explain what she was doing, all he got was the impression of a sullen yellow light.
"Who got you with that stupid book?" he sighed, wishing he'd listened to his gut about her too-blue eyes. If he'd just touched her in the tent to open the connection… but, no, she'd been deliberately standing far enough away to stay out of his reach.
"I don't know about a book?" she said. The most terrible thing about the yellow Stone was that the people it corrupted were still themselves, just twisted to its ends. "I'm genuinely sorry, 'arry. But you 'ave to die, and, as champion, I can 'elp take over Alfheim for Fazzer."
"Probably not talking about Maréchal, are you? I'd say, 'Fleur, fight it,' but I don't think you can." He was trying to figure out how to get loose, but her knife was very sharp and he'd walked right into a really good throat-slitting position for her. That extra bit of height she had on him really limited his leverage options to throw her off before she could open up his windpipe.
With nobody moving, the wall of bamboo was only closing slowly, inevitably, but she'd probably go through with it before it got there to potentially shove them apart. For all that he'd said he didn't think she could fight it, there was a hesitation there. The yellow wall he was getting from his empathy pulsed in time with her heartbeat, which he could basically feel with her wrapped around him. It wasn't as sexy a way to go as it would probably sound if he got out of it. Not that a way was presenting itself. But then…
"What in Niflheim?!" Cedric's voice shouted, and then there was a blast of magic and Fleur's arm went limp, the knife bouncing off of his armor and only doing some light damage to the front of his robes as it fell to the ground. It really was very sharp. Harry spun around and was able to settle her carefully to the ground as he saw the Hufflepuff seeker emerging from the bamboo. A faint blue glow of the magic he'd manifested from his cane was just fading, and he looked shocked. "Was she trying to cut your throat?"
"The Death Eaters got to her," Harry said, pleased to note that he could still feel her, so whatever Cedric had cast had just been to stun. And he thought he could even feel the yellow fading now that she was unconscious, just as it had for those that had been controlled in his second year. He regarded Cedric warily as he lowered her to rest on the ground. "Mind control." He said it portentously, searching the other boy's blue eyes for signs that he'd also been compromised.
"Wow. Tough luck," Cedric said, seemingly more baffled than Harry. "Well, wall's coming!" With that, the older boy just sprinted away, down the open pathway, quickly leaving Harry's range.
It was oncoming. And as much as he'd like to wake Fleur and Viktor up, he wasn't sure they wouldn't be a liability if there were more real threats in the maze. Maybe Fleur was the attempt to kill him. But he didn't have time to sit there all night and game out the chances. Besides, if Cedric was also mind controlled, who knew what his victory might mean? Harry shot up magical sparks to catch the hosts' attention over Fleur and Viktor's bodies, squeezed her hand, and set back off into the forest.
He wasn't trying to be too trusting that she'd wake up sane, though. He grabbed her knife and took it with him.
The next time Harry hit a clearing he was surprised that it was real, not just a temporary dirt path shifted open by the animate bamboo. There were boulders. There was a pond. There was a huge tree with a beautiful crown of red blossoms that he could make out in the rosy light of dawn. But he still didn't feel like he was right on top of his tracking mark, despite the appropriateness of the surroundings.
There was also a dark-haired woman in simple yellow robes waiting for him. In the twilight at ground level, he thought she kind of looked like the actress he'd met at the race back in August. "Um, hi?" he checked, entering the clearing warily.
"Harry Potts," the woman gave a smile of recognition. "I'd hoped to get to meet you. I am Ying Nan." He blinked as her lip movements didn't really match up, before realizing that his translator must have kicked in, and she was speaking… Mandarin, maybe? Belying her greeting, she was moving into a martial arts stance.
"I didn't realize I was famous in… China?" he hazarded, mirroring her stance as much as he was able. He might have been able to go ahead and use a magic attack on her, but that seemed really rude to do to a nice older lady who maybe just wanted to spar?
"We only agreed to participate in this foolish trial because an old friend asked us," she enigmatically pronounced. "And I could not miss a chance to test her student."
"The Ancient One talked to you. Got it," Harry said, pacing around the glade as he tried to get a sense of what she was about to do to him, martial-arts wise. Probably kick his ass, if he was any judge of confident older Kung Fu folks. At least she didn't really seem to have any height on him, so he wouldn't be horribly out of his weight class like he would against most adults. "I'm kind of in a rush, though?"
"What is coming is inevitable, according to my friend," she explained, "so there is time to see what you've learned."
"Man, not another absolute point in time," Harry whined. "She could have at least warned me."
"Seers are frustrating," Ying Nan agreed, then suddenly rushed forward in a cloud of flying leaves.
What she was doing was unlike any martial art Harry had seen before, hard strikes couched in a soft style. He tried to block and it was like the strike had never been thrown. He tried to counter-attack, and she wasn't there. Simply gliding out of the way, each step was an economy of motion he could never hope to master. It was almost like she was the air itself. If he didn't see her, he'd think he was shadow boxing.
"You're amazing," he complimented her, when she finally made a moment's contact to brush a leg against his own and send him sprawling to the ground.
"You could be better," she said, with an earnestness that kept it from sounding like trash talk, giving him the time to get back to his feet before coming in with another flurry of blows and leaves.
"I haven't had a chance to learn any styles like this," he explained, barely staying ahead of her strikes and keenly aware that she was probably moving at only a fraction of the speed she could if this wasn't just a test. "I'm small enough that the hard styles aren't going to be as good for me."
"It requires you to be in touch with what your opponent is doing. To anticipate and understand." The dance that they were doing was strange, and Harry suddenly realized that she was both deflecting his strikes and actually repositioning his stance as she did it. Making his movements more in line with her own. Guiding him to move like she did. "You may have the ability."
"Can they teach me this at Kamar-Taj?" he asked, going for what looked like a spot she'd left open only to be flipped through the air and fall flat on the ground, just shy of braining himself on a boulder.
"I will talk to my friend," she seemingly agreed. "Your passage is opening. It was good to meet you, Harry Potts."
"You as well, Ying Nan," Harry said, getting back to his feet and bowing, before rushing off into the corridor that had opened from the clearing, seeming to head straight to where his tracking spell was registering the cup.
In the growing light of the morning, Harry could make out camera drones floating above. He wondered if they'd given the crowd good footage of him getting his butt kicked by a nice lady. And the new corridor in the bamboo was perfectly straight as all of them were, a T-intersection a hundred yards away and to his left that seemed to go to where the tracking spell was leading him, with the corridor continuing even further ahead. And from the opposite branch, he saw Cedric pelting forward, closer to the turn and making a mad dash for the cup.
Harry redoubled his effort, hoping he had some gas in the tank, but really just wanting to put on a good show at this point. He knew that Cedric was faster on foot, and had a head start. Hopefully nothing would go wrong from the boy winning, because there wasn't really a way that Harry could beat him. He wouldn't even have time to pull out his Firebolt, with his armor pockets challenging to access under his fireproof robes. While Harry still had yards to go, Cedric turned down the corridor that Harry was sure led to the cup. Sure enough, when he finally made it, the older boy's lead still growing, he could clearly see a golden trophy cup sitting on a boulder in a small clearing.
And then the weirdest thing happened. A dog-lion the size of a bison came leaping out of the bamboo and tackled Cedric into the dirt only a few feet from the cup. It looked like one of the mythical guardian figures Harry had really only seen as decorations at Chinese restaurants.
Harry glanced back and forth as he ran, checking to make sure he wasn't about to get his own monster as a final challenge, but it seemed like it was just going after Cedric. Not believing his good fortune, Harry poured on the speed. He could just run past while…
While the guy that had saved his life barely an hour earlier looked like he was being very savaged by the lion-dog. Cedric was sprawled out, his cane had gotten knocked out of his hand, and it looked like the guardian creature was actually trying to eat his face as the boy did what he could to fend off its immense jaws. Nothing else had been that violent, but maybe this was a different kind of monster? Maybe someone had mind controlled it? Could Harry risk Cedric getting mauled to death?
"Hey!" Harry shouted, flipping out an energy whip and getting the creature around a tusk, throwing his whole weight against the line to pull its head clear of Cedric. The beast roared in confusion, not expecting the sudden attack, and toppled sideways completely off. Harry actually tweaked his ankle putting so much force into the attack.
No idiot, Cedric slid free immediately, grabbing up his cane and swinging it at the dog-lion, releasing a burst of blue light as it connected with the side of the face that Harry was putting his weight against. Groaning, the creature seemed stunned at least for the moment, and Cedric scrambled to his feet and said, "Thanks, Harry."
"Don't mention it," Harry said, releasing his energy whip and trying to get to his feet, his ankle protesting. Cedric was right there, and Harry had another half-dozen yards to clear, not counting going around the monster. He sighed and gave in to the inevitable, "Take it, then. You're right there."
The older boy clearly looked at the cup, and back at Harry who was gingerly walking forward, testing how much weight he could put on his ankle. It didn't feel sprained. He'd probably be okay again in a little while, but he couldn't run at the moment. "Seems wrong to win with you injuring yourself to help me."
Harry shrugged, "You got Fleur. We're even."
That almost seemed to persuade Cedric, but he said, "Even. Yeah. You said you originally put in for Vanaheim, not Midgard, right?"
"Yeah?" Harry was around the lion-dog, which was shaking the magic out of its head and contemplating getting back up.
"Then why don't we both take it? Either way, it's a Hogwarts win."
"You're such a Hufflepuff," Harry chuckled.
"Thanks. You're basically an honorary one yourself. We did this whole thing together. Let's win it together?"
"If you're sure," Harry shrugged. He was almost there anyway. He waved up to the camera drone floating in the sunlight above the clearing. "On three? One, two, three…"
As their hands touched the handles of the ornate goblet, Harry was not expecting his stomach to suddenly lurch as the ground dropped out from underneath him. He'd never taken a portkey before, but it seemingly let gravity do a lot of the work with the portal it opened straight below.
Harry sprawled to his butt when he landed, going ahead and rolling to take the fall rather than trying to catch himself on his twisted ankle. He nearly brained himself on a gravestone for the trouble. Cedric landed more gracefully next to him, still hanging onto the cup. Wherever they were was dark, as if they'd crossed enough distance west to outrun the sunrise. "Where the hell are we?"
"Looks like a cemetery," Cedric opined, reaching down to help him up. Harry was waiting for his night vision to come back after the morning light where they'd been. "I guess we're still on… wherever we were."
"Earth, I'm pretty sure," Harry agreed. He was able to make out the grave markers and they seemed to be in Chinese pictograms, his implant superimposing English translations on top of them listing names and locations that weren't especially familiar to him. "I think we're still in China. We probably didn't go more than an hour west."
"I'll take your word for it. Is this another part of the task?" Cedric asked looking around.
"Shouldn't be. We got the cup. Maybe it tried to teleport us back to the convergence and we screwed it up because there were two of us."
"Well that's embarrassing," Cedric agreed, slightly relieved. "You're from here, though? So if we find civilization, you can contact someone?"
"I should have brought my phone," Harry agreed, realizing that he definitely could see hints of the sun catching them back up to the east. "Hopefully we don't cause an international incident. If there's a village that has internet, we can email Kamar-Taj for a pickup. That would probably be safest." If all else failed, he could use his hand mirror to contact Sirius to tell him what had happened, but since that line of communication seemed to be unique, he was trying to keep it from becoming common knowledge.
"Oh, wow, check this out," Cedric seemed to have found something interesting at the back of an ancient-looking ornate tomb. Harry carefully walked over and saw that there was a shadow at the back of the building that looked deeper than it had any right to be. In glimmering magical letters, someone had written HOGWARTS and an arrow pointing toward the shadow. "I think it's a night road. We must have been meant to go this way."
It had been a long night. Harry's ankle hurt. Cedric was persuasive in his enthusiasm. He shrugged and said, "Fine, okay. Stupid overcomplicated wizard bullshit." Then he stepped through.
Similarly to the time he'd been to Niflheim and back, space was linked but not folded. He felt himself slithering down the minor root of the world tree, before falling out… still in a graveyard. This one was much bigger, and in full night. He could tell he was at least definitely back on Vanaheim, having grown accustomed to the subtle change to electricity and presence of magic, plus the nearly-full moon was distinctive. But unless Hogwarts had a massive graveyard that nobody had mentioned to him, they were not back at the school.
"Ow. Surtur's tits. I forgot how much those hurt," Cedric said, being ejected from the night road behind him.
Harry blinked. That was a weird thing to say. The last person he'd known to complain about travel through a night road was Fandral, because Asgardians were too powerful to travel through them unscathed. But why was Cedric complaining?
He'd barely turned around to start to ask when Cedric's cane was hitting him in the face, the blue gem at the pommel flaring with light that blasted Harry into unconsciousness.
This wasn't quite long enough that I felt good about breaking it in half, so enjoy the monster chapter with only one cliffhanger instead of another one at the Fleur scene. Next chapter is the graveyard and then we're into Avengers. Are you all excited? I'm excited.