The winning condition appeared simple on the surface: collect more badges than your opponents.
However, they would need to simultaneously protect their own badges from theft while hunting down and stealing the badges carried by the other teams.
Viktor, Fleur, Cedric, and Hermione instinctively tightened their grips on their respective badges.
The rules sounded simple enough when stated aloud. But somehow, looking at the dark treeline of the Forbidden Forest looming before them and feeling the weight of expectation from thousands of watching eyes, it didn't seem that easy at all. Nothing about this felt easy.
"It appears you all understand the basic framework now," Bryan said, his purple eyes were glinting with something that might have been amusement.
He showed no intention of offering further explanation more on strategy. Instead, he glanced at his watch with a casual gesture. "You have ten minutes remaining before we begin. I suggest you use this time to discuss your tactics briefly with your teammates. When time's up, Mr. Bagman will give the signal to start."
"Uh..." Harry raised his hand tentatively, hesitating to speak.
"Oh, I nearly forgot to mention something rather important," Bryan said smoothly, understanding Harry's unspoken question he could even say it.
"The only tools you may use during this competition are your wands and whatever resources you can find within the Forbidden Forest. All other magical items are strictly prohibited in this competition."
Hearing this clear confirmation of what Hermione had predicted, Harry's face immediately fell, his earlier flicker of hope about the Firebolt was extinguished completely. His shoulders sagged with disappointment.
Now the spectators began filling the massive stands. Hundreds upon hundreds of students streamed through the entrances in chattering groups, the air was filling with excited chatter, nervous speculation, and the constant sound of shuffling feet as people sought their seats.
The sky was stretched in a clear, perfect azure blue, vast and cloudless. Not a single wisp of white floated across that stretch, which at least strongly showed that rain was unlikely to disrupt today's competition.
Harry's eyes scanned the VIP section and quickly spotted Sirius, Remus, Mr. and Mrs. Weasley, Bill, and that American witch Amelia climbing onto the platform reserved for special guests.
He thought Sirius would at least catch his eye and offer him an encouraging wave or gesture of support. But instead, to Harry's surprise and little annoyance, Sirius appeared completely engrossed in conversation with Amelia.
He was leaning close to speak with her, his expression focused and engaged, apparently completely forgetting to even glance in Harry's direction.
Watching this unexpected scene unfold, a peculiar feeling rose from somewhere deep in Harry's chest. It wasn't quite jealousy, not exactly hurt, but something complicated and uncomfortable that he couldn't quite name.
After the students finally settled into their seats, creating a restless sea of faces in house colors, several staff members climbed to the main platform.
Professor Snape, Professor Vector, Madam Hooch, and several others. Each of them carried a broomstick.
"We'll be patrolling in shifts above the Forbidden Forest throughout the duration of the competition," Madam Hooch announced to all the contestants, her yellow hawk-like eyes sweeping across their faces to ensure they were paying attention.
"If at any point you can't continue—whether due to injury, exhaustion, or simply deciding you want to withdraw from the competition: use your wand to send red sparks into the sky. We'll come to your rescue immediately, within seconds. Is that completely understood by everyone?"
The young wizards all nodded.
Ron's gaze drifted sideways toward the area beside the main platform below, where Madam Pomfrey stood beside several empty stretchers. Her expression was grave, almost dark, as she carefully organized her medical supplies alongside several healers who had been specially dispatched from St. Mungo's Hospital specifically for this event.
The presence of professional healers, not just the school nurse was a clear indication of the expected danger level
Ron felt his calves go weak at the sight.
Judging from the rules Professor Watson had outlined, direct encounters with the other champion teams were absolutely inevitable, there was no way to avoid confrontation when you had to steal their badges which meant injuries, potentially serious ones, would be unavoidable as well.
The stretchers weren't there for decoration.
Suddenly, without warning, a sharp, piercing electronic sound cut cleanly through the rising noise of the spectator area, silencing conversations.
Everyone in the stands immediately looked toward the source of the sound. They discovered that the four massive screens standing at the edge of the Forbidden Forest were lighting up from their previous dark, dormant state.
Large black text appeared on the white screens:
Cedric Diggory: 41 points
Fleur Delacour: 40 points
Viktor Krum: 41 points
Hermione Granger: 42 points
These were the champions' accumulated scores after the first round of dragon-fighting. The second round beneath the Black Lake had been invalidated from the record due to the terrible incident, so the champions' scores remained unchanged from the first task.
The four competitors' scores were extremely close, which meant the ultimate winner of the entire Triwizard Tournament would depend almost entirely on the results of this final round.
Buzz!
Several Omniocular magical cameras suddenly flew into position at the forest boundary, hovering in mid-air. Their multiple lenses rotated and focused on the champions and their respective teammates who stood waiting tensely for final instructions on the main platform.
The displayed scores on the large screens faded away. Then each screen reconfigured, and each champion's team came to occupy one full screen.
The erupting cheers from the crowd were absolutely earth-shaking. The roar was so loud that in the dark green depths of the forest, a massive flock of startled birds flapped their wings in panicked flight, skimming just above the treetops as they fled rapidly toward the deeper, safer parts of the Forbidden Forest.
When the young wizards suddenly saw their own faces appear on the giant screens, magnified to enormous proportions and visible to everyone in the stands, no one except Viktor could maintain anything approaching complete composure.
Not even Hermione, Cedric, and Fleur, all of whom had already experienced two previous competition rounds and thought themselves somewhat prepared for public attention could stay completely calm in the face of this exposure.
During the first competition with the dragons, the large screens had been set up outside the arena enclosure. While they'd been battling for their lives against fire-breathing monsters inside that space, they couldn't see the screens at all.
The second round had taken place deep underwater in the Black Lake's murky depths, where the live broadcast magical cameras couldn't properly capture clear footage.
This was the first time since the Tournament began that the champions fully realized their every single move, every expression, every moment of fear or triumph would be watched in real-time by thousands upon thousands of people. Not just Hogwarts students, not just the British magical community, but viewers across all of Europe.
"This is absolutely mad, bloody insane—the entire European wizarding world is watching us right now!" Ron said, his voice was emerging as strangled and thin. His face had gone pale, making his freckles stand out like spots of rust.
Within a single second, his forehead had become drenched in sweat that trickled down his temples. "They're all seeing this. Everyone. Everyone in Europe—"
"Careful with what you say, Ron, we're being broadcasted live!" Hermione quickly reminded him in an urgent hiss, though her own face was equally pale, her hands were trembling where they gripped her wand. "They can probably hear us too. Mind your language!"
"NOW!" From the judges' stand, Ludo Bagman stood up dramatically. His face was flushed with high spirits and enthusiasm.
He pointed his wand at his own throat and cast a crisp Sonorus charm, so his magically amplified voice resounded clearly throughout every section of the stands, reaching even the farthest seats. "Champions, take your positions at your chosen gateways!"
Amidst another earth-shaking round of cheers and applause that made the viewing stands themselves seem to vibrate, the twelve young wizards descended from the main platform via the steel stairs, running in an awkward fluster past a group of goblin technicians who were making final adjustments to the broadcasting equipment.
After hesitating briefly beneath the large screens, glancing between the four identical stone gateways with uncertainty, the four champions made their selections. Each led their team members in choosing one of the ancient archways. They quickly ran to stand before their chosen entrance, forming neat groups of three, awaiting further instructions from the judges.
Hermione, Harry, and Ron stood before the rightmost stone gateway. The archway looming before them wasn't sealed with any visible barrier, it was simply an opening carved from dark granite, an empty space. However, the view beyond the archway seemed to show a completely enclosed corridor without any source of light. It was pitch black.
Yet when Harry craned his neck curiously around the pillar to look beyond the gate from a different angle, trying to see what lay on the other side, the view appeared to be perfectly normal forest.
"Now, I ask all champions and their teammates to prepare yourselves!" Ludo Bagman's magically enhanced voice rang out again across the competition grounds, silencing the crowd's chatter. "Ready your wands! Steady your nerves!"
Harry quickly stopped his wandering, distracted thoughts and forced himself to focus. He took a deep breath that did little to calm his racing heart, then turned to look back toward the competition platform one final time.
At this distance, with dozens of yards separating them, Sirius and the others' faces were barely visible as anything more than pale blurs. Harry could only vaguely make out that several people were waving at him.
Ron was still muttering beside him in a whisper: "Mad... this is absolutely mad... completely mental..."
Hermione, who at least had previous competition experience to draw upon, was trying to regulate her breathing. She inhaled slowly through her nose, held it, exhaled through her mouth in counts. Clearly, even she felt genuinely nervous about this final task.
Harry turned his head to look toward where Neville, Luna, and Cedric stood. He discovered they too were simply standing there in frozen stillness, not communicating with each other at all.
'So everyone's the same... everyone's terrified,' Harry thought. This discovery made him feel somewhat better about his own fear. He exhaled heavily, then—
Beep!
A sharp, brief sound rang clearly in Harry's ear, cutting through every other noise.
"The Triwizard Tournament Third Task begins NOW! Champions, please enter your gateways!"
Mr. Bagman's voice still echoed in the air. The loudest cheer yet erupted from thousands of throats simultaneously, a tsunami of sound so powerful it made the forest leaves before Harry rustle and dance on their branches—
"Let's go! Move!" Hermione commanded in a voice much shriller and higher-pitched than her usual tone, then stepped forward decisively through the gateway without hesitation.
Harry and Ron had no time to observe what was happening with the other champion groups. They hurried to follow Hermione, their feet were moving automatically.
The instant Harry's body passed through the plane of the gateway, stepping from bright sunlight into shadow, the loud commotion outside suddenly vanished as if someone had cast a Silencing Charm on the entire world. The roar of the crowd, the ambient sounds of the forest, the rustle of wind, all of it disappeared in a single moment.
In the pitch-black corridor that enclosed them, only the three of them existed. Harry could hear nothing except their own tight, rapid breathing and the frantic hammering of his own heart in his ears.
This abrupt, shocking change left Hermione frozen in place, her forward momentum was halted. She quickly spun around, needing to confirm that Harry and Ron were still with her.
She could indeed see them right behind her. But the gateway that had just admitted them mere seconds ago had completely disappeared.
The three of them now found themselves suspended in what appeared to be an absolutely dark space. It felt like being cast into the outer reaches of the universe itself, into the void between stars. In every direction stretched an infinite abyss that seemed eager to devour them entirely, to swallow them into nothingness!
"Wh-what's happening? Where are we?" Ron's voice cracked with rising panic.
The three of them seemed to be the only luminous things in this dark abyss, generating their own light that allowed them to see each other's frightened faces but nothing else beyond. Everything else had vanished without a trace, as if the world itself had been erased. "What is this place?"
"Where... where are we? What happened to the forest?" Ron stammered again, his fear was evident in every syllable. His pupils had constricted to extreme. "Where did everyone go? The crowd, the judges, Professor Watson, where did they all go?"
"I don't know, Ron," Hermione said, her own voice was tense with stress. She was panting despite standing still.
The oppressive, suffocating darkness surrounding them on all sides made the three instinctively huddle closer together,. They raised their wands in unison, each murmuring "Lumos" to produce light. They held the illuminated wand-tips forward defensively, trying desperately to see more of their surroundings.
However, this proved to be completely futile, and useless. Their vision seemed to be sealed off by some powerful magic, contained within a sphere extending only a few feet from their bodies. They could see nothing beyond that small bubble of visibility.
"What should we do now... Is this some kind of test? Finding a way out of this place?" Harry asked, trying to think logically despite his fear. His voice sounded strange to his own ears, flat and dead in the lightless space.
This unusual fear was also proving to be a severe test of Harry's already strained nerves. The sensation was unlike anything he'd experienced before.
It felt as if they'd been exiled from the world itself, cast out of reality. Apart from Hermione and Ron, the entire universe had abandoned him, leaving him in this endless nothing.
"It certainly seems that way..." A tremendous sense of helplessness flooded Hermione's usually sharp mind, to drown her capacity for rational thought. This particular torment was different from facing dragons or even facing Voldemort in the graveyard...
The fear was more pure, stripped of any specific threat they could fight or defend against. It was as if they were facing fear itself in its most condensed form, the terror of isolation!
Hermione pointed her wand tremblingly downward toward where the ground should be—still nothing was visible in the darkness below. But when she cautiously bent and felt with her free hand, extending her fingers into the black void, she discovered that beneath her feet was indeed smooth, solid ground.
Harry also cautiously began exploring the area around them with his toes, taking small shuffling steps and testing each movement. Slowly, he discovered that what appeared to their eyes to be bottomless, infinite abysses on all sides were actually normal, solid ground.
They weren't floating in nothingness.
This discovery made the three of them feel slightly better, marginally less terrified. At least they weren't about to fall into endless space.
"But which direction should we go?" Ron's voice, almost rising to a scream despite his attempt to control it, echoed strangely through the space.
Hermione pressed her lips together tightly. She held her wand carefully flat on her open palm. "Point me!"
The wand immediately began to spin on her palm like a top, rotating faster and faster. But instead of slowing and settling to point in a specific direction as it should, it kept spinning wildly, accelerating until it was practically a blur.
It spun so fast it nearly flew off her palm.
In the sinister, eerie darkness that pressed against them from all sides, three deathly pale faces stared at each other.
Despair roared around them like an invisible beast...
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