Hello there!
Welcome to the next chapter of Cruel Angel Thesis, hope you enjoy. Now on to the review.
girani4: I do still care... It's just other stories had my attention.
And now story time.
The towering hedges cast black shadows across the path, and, whether because they were so tall and thick or because they had been enchanted, the sound of the surrounding crowd was silenced the moment Claire entered the maze.
She pulled out her wand, casting 'Lumos.' After about fifty yards, she reached a fork.
She turned right, and hurried on, holding her wand high over her head, trying to see as far ahead as possible. Still, there was nothing in sight. Claire kept looking behind her, having the odd feeling that she was being watched.
The maze was growing darker with every passing minute as the sky overhead deepened to navy. She reached a second fork. "Point Me." she whispered to her wand, holding it flat in her palm.
The wand spun around once and pointed toward her right into solid hedge. That way was north, and she knew that she needed to go northwest for the center of the maze. The best he could do was to take the left fork and go right again as soon as possible. By now, all champions should be inside the maze.
The path ahead was empty too, and when Claire reached a right turn and took it, she again found her way unblocked. It felt as though the maze were luring her into a false sense of security.
Then she heard movement right behind her. She held out her wand, ready to attack, but its beam fell only upon Fleur, who had just hurried out of a path on the right-hand side. The sleeve of her robe was smoking.
"One of Hagrid's Blast-Ended Skrewts." the tall blonde hissed, "They're enormous..."
She shook her head and dived out of sight, along another path. Keen to put plenty of distance between herself and the skrewts, Claire hurried off again.
She moved on, quickly and quietly as possible, listening hard, her wand held high once more.
Right... left... right again... Twice she found herself facing dead ends. She did the Four-Point Spell again and found that she was going too far west. She turned back, took a left turn, and saw an odd golden mist floating ahead of her.
Claire approached it cautiously, pointing the wand's beam at it. This looked like some kind of enchantment. She wondered whether she might be able to blow it out of the way.
"Flaverint!" she said, using one of the charms Jeager had thought her during the privet lessons she had with Harry.
The spell shot straight through the mist, pushing the mist to the side. "Thanks Professor Jeager." she said and she ran through the cleared path through the enchanted mist.
She paused at a junction of two paths and she took the left fork with a feeling of increasing unease... She met nothing for ten minutes, but kept running into dead ends. Twice she took the same wrong turning. Finally, she found a new route and started to jog along it, her wandlight waving, making her shadow flicker and distort on the hedge walls.
Then she rounded another corner and found herself facing a Blast-Ended Skrewt.
"The actual hell." Claire whispered surprised.
Fleur was right, it was enormous. Ten feet long, it looked more like a giant scorpion than anything. Its long sting was curled over its back. Its thick armor glinted in the light from Claire's wand, which she pointed at it.
"Stupefy!"
The spell hit the skrewt's armor and rebounded; Claire ducked just in time, but could smell burning hair; it had singed the top of her head. The skrewt issued a blast of fire from its end and flew forward toward her.
"Impedimenta!" Claire yelled, aiming at its fleshy, shell-less underside. And as the Skrewt froze, Claire ran in the opposite direction, the Impediment Curse was not permanent, the Skrewt would be regaining the use of its legs at any moment.
She took a left path and hit a dead end, a right, and hit another; forcing herself to stop, heart hammering, she performed the Four-Point Spell again, backtracked, and chose a path that would take her northwest.
She had been hurrying along the new path for a few minutes, when she heard something on the path up ahead that made her stop dead.
"What are you doing?" Cedric's voice yelled, "What the hell d'you think you're doing?"
And then Claire heard Krum's voice.
"Crucio!"
The air was suddenly full of Cedric's yells. Horrified, Claire began sprinting up her path, she saw Cedric jerking and twitching on the ground, Krum standing over him.
Claire pulled herself up and pointed her wand at Krum just as he looked up. Upon seeing her, Krum turned and began to run.
"Stupefy!" she yelled.
The spell hit Krum in the back; he stopped dead in his tracks, fell forward, and lay motionless, face-down in the grass. Claire dashed over to Cedric, who had stopped twitching and was lying there panting, his hands over his face.
"Are you okay? Are you okay, Cedric?" Claire said, grabbing Cedric's arm.
"Yeah." Cedric panted, "Yeah... I don't believe it... he crept up behind me... I heard him, I turned around, and he had his wand on me..."
Cedric got up, he was still shaking. He and Claire looked down at Krum.
"I can't believe this..." Claire said, staring at Krum, "I thought he was all right."
"So did I." Cedric said, "Should we leave him here?"
"No. We should send up red sparks. Someone'll come and collect him..." Claire said, "Otherwise he'll probably be eaten by a skrewt."
"He'd deserve it." Cedric muttered, but all the same, he raised his wand and shot a shower of red sparks into the air, which hovered high above Krum, marking the spot where he lay.
Claire and Cedric stood there in the darkness for a moment, looking around them. Then she said, "Well... we'd better go on..."
"What?" Cedric said, "Oh... yeah... right..."
The two of them proceeded up the dark path without speaking, then Claire turned right, and Cedric left.
Cedric's footsteps soon died away as Claire moved on, continuing to use the Four-Point Spell, making sure she was moving in the right direction. She could hardly believe what she'd just seen Krum do. The use of an Unforgivable Curse on a fellow human being meant a life term in Azkaban, that was what Moody had told them.
Krum surely couldn't have wanted the Triwizard Cup that badly...
Every so often she hit more dead ends, but the increasing darkness made her feel sure she was getting near the heart of the maze. Then, as she strode down a long, straight path, her wand was telling her she was bang on course; she dashed up this one and saw light ahead.
The Triwizard Cup was gleaming on a plinth a hundred yards away. Suddenly a dark figure hurtled out onto the path in front of her.
Fleur was going to get there first. She was sprinting as fast as she could toward the cup, and Claire knew she would never catch up, Fleur was much taller and had much longer legs.
Then Claire saw something immense over a hedge to her left, moving quickly along a path that intersected with her own; it was moving so fast Fleur was about to run into it, and Fleur, her eyes on the cup, had not seen it.
"Fleur!" Claire bellowed, "On your left!"
Fleur looked around just in time to hurl herself past the thing and avoid colliding with it, as a gigantic spider stepped into the path and began to bear down upon Fleur as Harry arrived from the opposite direction.
"Stupefy!" Harry and Claire shouted; the spell hit the spider's gigantic, hairy black body, but for all the good it did, they might as well have thrown a stone at it; the spider jerked, scuttled around, and ran at Claire instead.
The spider was either so large, or so magical, that the spells were doing no more than aggravating it. Harry had one horrifying glimpse of eight shining black eyes and razor-sharp pincers before it was upon him.
"Stupefy!"
It worked, the three combined did what two had not: The spider keeled over sideways, flattening a nearby hedge, and strewing the path with a tangle of hairy legs.
"Harry! Claire!" Fleur's voice echoed through the maze, "You all right? Did it fall on you?"
"No." Harry called back, he leaned against the hedge, gasping for breath, and looked around.
"I'm fine." Claire said, seeing Fleur standing feet from the Triwizard Cup, which was gleaming behind her, "Take it, then. Go on, take it. You're there."
But Fleur didn't move. She merely stood there, looking at the duo. Then she turned to stare at the cup. Claire saw the longing expression on her face in its golden light. Fleur looked around at Harry and Claire again.
She took a deep breath, "No." she said, "Let's do this fair and square."
"What do you have in mind?" Harry said.
"Just a small race." she suggested, "Like we were doing before the spider interrupted."
"That sounds..." Claire said exchanging looks with Harry, "Agreeable."
The three of them walked back, so that a good distance was between them and the Triwizard Cup.
"When the orb burst." Claire said, casting a small red orb from her wand, which floated in front of them.
The a loud pang, the orb disappeared and the three of them rushed towards the cup.
Neither of them looked how far the others were, but two reached the cup faster than another. Those who reached the cup first felt a jerk somewhere behind their navel. Feet leaving the ground, unable to release the hand holding the Triwizard Cup; it was pulling them onward in a howl of wind and swirling color.
And that's the end of the chapter, hope you enjoyed it.
I know it's a bit on the short site but I promise after this I will try to make the upcomming chapters bigger.
Many thanks to everyone who read, review, favorite or follows this story as usual.
For now I wish you all a fantastic day, if you enjoyed my work don't forget to leave a review and I hope to see you ladies and gents next time.
Mischief Managed.