24th June 1995, the Quidditch pitch entrance, 9:00 PM
The sun had not quite finished setting.
The long English twilight held a stripe of deep amber along the western horizon, and the Hogwarts grounds were caught in that particular June half-dark that is neither day nor night — warm air, a sky still faintly luminous, and the maze rising from the pitch in its enormous dark silence like a thing that had decided to wait.
Ludo Bagman's voice rolled across the pavilion one final time.
"Champions! To the entrance!"
The walk from the pavilion to the maze's mouth was approximately forty yards. Harry walked it flanked by the warm collective cheer of approximately fifteen hundred people, the Hogwarts section loudest, the Gryffindors loudest within it, Ron's voice carrying over all of them with the particular volume of a best friend who had decided that restraint was not appropriate for this moment.
Verrona was waiting at the Champion's tent beside the entrance. She handed Harry his Atid Stella suit — the dark crimson fabric, the Hogwarts crest, the Atid Stella sigil — and when he took it, held his hands briefly between both of hers.
"Your best, kiddo. That is all anyone can ask."
"Yes, Verrona."
The six Champions changed. The six Champions lined up.
Bagman raised his wand.
"There will be no commentary tonight," he announced. "The Third Task is — by the judges' unanimous decision — best experienced in silence." A ripple of disappointment moved through the crowd. "The Atid Stella Billywig-Camera projectors will continue to broadcast. What happens in the maze you will see. What you will not hear is my voice. I shall let the maze speak for itself."
He lowered his wand.
"Mr Potter. Mr Diggory. First."
Harry and Cedric stepped to the entrance. Harry looked back once — found Ethan's amber eyes in the crowd with the ease of a boy who had been finding that particular gaze across distances his entire life. Ethan inclined his head. Beside him Luna's hand rose in a small wave, her grey eyes steady and soft.
Harry turned and walked into the maze.
The Point Me charm held his wand steady north. Harry moved south-west by the logic of the four-point spell and his own instinct — not memorising the top-view, which the maze had already rearranged, but reading each junction as it came. The hedges, up close, were a wall of absolute dark green, the air between them cooler than outside and smelling of earth and cut vegetation and something else — something electrical, magical, alive.
He heard the Blast-Ended Skrewt before he saw it.
The dragging scrape of its armoured underside against the path stone, the small angry hiss of its back-end sparking — Harry had read enough about them in Hagrid's care, and had enough warning from his own careful attention, to have his wand up before it came around the corner.
It was roughly the size of a large dog and approximately as pleasant.
Stupefy!
His shot, backed by the full Runic concentration he had been building all year, hit the creature square in its one unarmoured section — the soft pale joint behind its front leg. The Skrewt skidded six feet along the path, its sparking end flaring once, and went still.
Looking at the beast laying still on the ground Harry's eyes grew sharper as he took a beep breath and then Harry stepped over it and moved on.
After quite some time, Harry heard a commotion nearby, he instinctiively lowered his posture, his step deliberately lighter.
There, he found Robert by sound first — not the sounds of a boy fighting, but the sounds of a boy who had stopped fighting.
The section of the maze Harry entered was a wide junction, its four paths dimly lit by the small enchanted lanterns at each corner.
Robert Thornwood was standing with his back pressed to the hedge, both hands flat against it, his wand arm hanging at his side. His Ilvermorny suit was torn at the shoulder. There was dried blood along his left temple. His face was the grey-white of a boy whose reserves had been used up a long time ago.
In front of him, approximately twelve feet down the left-hand path, a Boggart hung in the air in its Dementor configuration — hooded, enormous, turning slowly, its rattling breath filling the junction with cold.
From the looks of it, the situation was quite bad for Robert, who had visible injures of previous battles, his mental state wasn't very good. Harry could saw in his eyes that he was practically spent, barely moving a muscle against fear.
Then, Robert's eyes found Harry's.
For perhaps two seconds the boy considered his options.
Then he pressed his lips together, raised his wand with visible effort, and fired the spell — not a combat spell, but the two sharp white pulses of the retreat signal. He fired them steadily, without drama, and lowered his wand.
Done.
Harry opened his mouth.
The ground split.
From directly beneath the Boggart, with no warning beyond a deep thrumming vibration in the soles of Harry's feet, a construct rose out of the earth. It was approximately eight feet tall, shaped broadly like a man, composed of dark packed stone etched across every surface with Runic patterns that glowed steady blue in the maze's dimness — eyes burning blue, each rune alive, each layer of stone fitted to the next with a precision that was not stonework but magic working as stonework. The golem.
It walked — not shambled, but walked, each step deliberate — directly at the Boggart. The Boggart, encountering something that had no fear for it to feed on, lurched sideways. The golem raised one enormous hand and drove it toward the creature with the composed certainty of a thing that did not experience hesitation, and the Boggart fled.
Then the golem turned to Robert.
A panel in its chest opened with a sound like a vault door. Robert, without comment, allow himself to be taken into it. The panel closed. The golem lowered itself back into the earth. The ground sealed.
The junction was empty.
Harry stared at the unmarked path for three seconds. 'Dad and Uncle Sam really got the word innovative magic to be a trade mark of Atid Stella huh...'
At the same time, at the pavilion the Ilvermorny, including the school's headmistress couldn't help but shook their head seeing Robert's forfeit on the projector, but nonetheless it was the student's safety above all else.
Fair to say, Robert did gave his best but due to his rotten luck, this time, he had encountered too many dangerous magical beasts since entering the maze, that Boggart disguised as a Dementor was the final straw that broke the camel's back.
Then the Boggart, which had retreated only as far as the next junction, drifted back around the corner and fixed its hollow attention on him.
A Dementor. Ten feet tall. Rattling breath. The cold arriving before it.
Harry felt the edges of his mother's voice beginning, the way they always did.
He pushed them back, his gaze darken as he remark inwardly. 'Robert! you own me this!'
With a stable mind Harry pointed his wand at the creature.
"Expecto Patronum!"
The silver shape that burst from his wand was not yet the stag — it was the incorporeal form, the great rushing wave of silver light, shapeless and enormous, that rolled down the junction and hit the Boggart with the force of something it had no language for.
The Boggart dissolved.
....
The crowd in the pavilion, watching the Billywig-Camera's feed, erupted. Many had their jaw drop seeing such a scene as those who knew the charm eventually knew how difficult it was, yet Harry Potter could casted the spell at ease proved that some of the rumors was true.
Ron and Sirius reacted the most seeing Harry performance, shouting nonstop as the boasted their relationship with Harry before being shut down by Hermione and Lupin.
Hermione then focus on Viktor's projection, praying quitely for his safety. As of now, Viktor was still doing just fine, no beasts were really a challenge for him so far, though he had decided to proceed the maze much slower than others for fear of too many creature might jump at him at once.
In another corner, Howard and Arthur were exchanged great interest in the magic behind that golem, that deemed to force Ethan to explained to them later.
Molly who was also amaze by this, hearing the two men beside her couldn't help but shook her heads, it was then Molly pointed to the starting ground of the champions directing all those sit around her.
Following a rumble sound reveal a familiar golem.
The golem had brough back Robert. As he limped out of its chamber, the crowd still cheer for the unlucky champions, Robert only managed a wry smile then directed his gaze toward the Ilvermorny's section. In contrast to his expectation, the Headmistress and everyone else actualy more happy to see he had survived.
It was the, from the medical tent on the left side of the pavilion. Madam Pomfrey's team had already moving at a glacial pace toward Robert.
Robert finally allowed himself to totally relax as he let himself into the their embrace.
...
Back at the maze, Harry track back his way after making sure no surprises waiting for him at the corner.
No before long, He heard Fleur first — a single sharp scream, cut off.
He found her around the third turning past the Boggart junction, lying on her side against the hedge, unconscious but breathing. The scorch marks on the path around her were the curved, sweeping burn-patterns of hand-gesture magic. Uagadou magic.
Adaeze was standing ten feet away.
Harry's first thought was that she had been injured — she was swaying very slightly, her arms hanging loose, her head tilted at a wrong angle. Then she turned to face him, and he saw her eyes.
White.
Not rolled back. Not unfocused. White — a flat opaque white that covered the iris entirely, with nothing behind it that belonged to Adaeze Okonkwo.
'White eye?,' Harry thought. 'Is this....'
He raised both hands, wand visible but unthreatening.
"Adaeze. It's Harry. You're in the maze. You're—"
She moved both hands in a sharp gathering gesture, and the path beneath Harry's feet buckled and cracked. He threw himself sideways, hit the hedge with his shoulder, pushed off hard. A chunk of stone the size of a cauldron whistled past his ear. He flicked his wand and shunted Fleur's unconscious body around the corner before the next volley.
'Mind-controlled,' Harry gritted his teeth. 'Someone has her.'
They traded ground for almost two minutes — Adaeze's elemental attacks enormous and brutally precise, Harry dodging, deflecting where he could, trying to find the angle. She drove stone, soil, hedge-root, and compressed air at him in combinations that he had never faced and could not fully counter. She was, even controlled, extraordinary.
The moment came when she sent a horizontal wave of compressed soil at chest height. Harry dropped below it and came up fast, fired Stupefy at full concentration directly into the cloud of debris she'd created. The Stunner caught her through the dirt-fog as she stood blinded.
She dropped.
Harry crouched beside her. Her breathing was steady. Whatever had been behind her eyes was gone — her face was slack in the ordinary way of an unconscious person, not the terrible blankness of before. Harry breathed a sigh of relief.
He fired the rescue signal — two gold pulses, not the retreat — and waited until the ground opened and the golem came and took her.
He stood alone in the wrecked junction and steadied himself. His hands were not shaking. His heart was.
'Something was controlling her,' he thought. 'It there somethign else inside the maze? Someone is in here with us and they are not a beast...'
Harry suddenly snapped his mind of that thinking process, now it was not the time. Harry looked at the darkening sky, the ominous feeling never left his mind, right now he just wanted to end his task quick.
Then using this precious quite moments Harry took sometime to catch his breath and steady his mind before continue moving forward.
...
Meanwhile, at the pavilion.
The audience also found it weird that Adaeze was actively fighting other champions, thought it was true that champion could try to eliminate each other, this wasn't in line with all the champion's characters. Therefore, discussions and hypothesis began among the crowd in low murmurs.
Neville, who was seating in between Seamus and Dean, his face show visible signs of utter worry for Adaeze, as a matter of fact he had notice her usual after 15 minutes into the task.
Seamus keenly noticed this. "Say, aren't you pretty close with that girl. Any ideas why she acted like that." Dean also bore the same questioning look at Neville
"Adaeze couldn't... would have never done this. I-I don't know. Don't you find her acting weird since the start of the task?'
Dean and Seamus shook their heads.
...
After a while, Harry heard various loud commotion, the sound this scale meat something big was nearby and it also meant it was not a good sigh. Harry gulped as walk carefully towards the sound.
Harry turned a corner and found Viktor Krum at full sprint coming toward him, and had approximately two seconds before the Runespoor cleared the same corner, Harry eyes constricted seeing this for it was seven feet of triple-headed serpent, each head independent and furious, scales the colour of burnt copper, moving with the awful fluid speed of a creature that was all muscle and malice and the beast body almost block the way ahead of him.
Harry couldn't help but breathed in a cold breath. "Bloody hell". Unbeknownst to Harry, Ron who was watching also let out the same exclamation.
Harry ran.
Coincidentally, they found Cedric around the next turning — Cedric, who had been navigating carefully and who, on seeing the thing pursuing them, had the sense to immediately start running without asking questions.
The dead end found them before they found an exit.
Three walls of hedge, one open path behind them, and the Runespoor was filling it.
Viktor, with the composed decision of a boy who had been the most dangerous dueller in this maze all evening, turned and charged.
Not because it was safe. Because it was the only move that created space for the other two.
The Runespoor's three heads split their attention — two for Viktor, one tracking sideways for Cedric and Harry. Viktor drove Stupefy after Stupefy into the first head, keeping it occupied. Harry and Cedric flanked wide.
"Bombarda!" — both of them, converging.
The combined detonation caught the creature in the central body. It staggered. Its tail swung.
It caught Viktor across the left leg.
Harry heard the crack from ten feet away.
Viktor went down without a sound. He raised his wand from the ground and fired the rescue signal himself, two steady gold pulses, then turned to look at Harry with the composed dark eyes of a young man who had decided that this was fine, it could be managed, and his friends should continue.
"Go," he said.
Harry gripped his shoulder once. Cedric did the same.
They went.
...
At the pavilion, Hermione couldn't help but breath a sigh of relief seeing this, Ron acute patted her shoulder while shuddered from the danger of the Tournament even now.
...
Harry and Cedric walked for a while in the warm dark, side by side, neither speaking. The maze had grown quieter around them — fewer sounds of combat, fewer distant spells. Only themselves, and the path, and the faint glow of the lanterns at the hedge-corners.
"You all right?" Cedric asked.
"Yes. You?"
"Mostly." He paused then as if thinking something, Harry spoke. "Cup first, or safety first?"
"Safety first. Cup second. If we reach it together, we reach it together."
Cedric nodded. "Good. That's good."
...
After some time, they encountered a sphinx.
The sphinx sat in the widest junction Harry had yet encountered, its great tawny head regarding them with the composed patience of a creature that had all the time it required. It posed its riddle. Harry solved it in three attempts; Cedric provided the fourth word. The sphinx stepped aside.
Then, the Acromantula came from above.
It dropped from the top of the hedge with no warning, eight legs landing on the path between them and the small clearing ahead where the Triwizard Cup sat on its plinth, glowing faintly gold in the June dark.
They hit it from both sides simultaneously — Stupefy and Reducto in combination, Cedric driving it left while Harry drove it right, working the flanking angle they had accidentally developed fighting the Runespoor. The creature went down in two sustained volleys.
Harry stood over it, panting.
Cedric was already looking at the Cup.
They looked at each other.
"Together?" Cedric said.
"Together."
They walked forward side by side. The Cup's gold light grew. Harry reached out. His fingers closed around the handle. Cedric's hand landed beside his a half-second later.
The world dissolved.
The portkey-sensation hit Harry like a hook behind the navel and the maze vanished — the hedges, the warm June air, the distant sound of the crowd — all of it gone, replaced by cold ground against his knees and the smell of earth and long grass and something older, something that had seeped into this place over years of quiet and death.
He raised his head.
A graveyard.
Dark stone markers tilted at angles across a long slope. A church, distant, its windows unlit. A single yew tree at the top of the rise, enormous and very still.
Cedric was already on his feet, wand out, turning a slow circle.
The cold arrived before Harry had quite processed why.
Not the cold of the evening. A deeper cold. A recognised cold. The cold that had been in the corridor outside the third-floor on his first year, in the chamber with Quirrell. The cold at the mouth of the Chamber of Secrets, from the diary's working. The cold from the vision in Divination — the high-backed chair, the thin pale hand.
He's here.
Cedric, following Harry's frozen stillness, turned toward the yew tree.
A figure was descending the slope toward them. Moving slowly. Moving carefully. Carrying something bundled in dark cloth against its chest — something small, something that moved with the twitching restless motion of a creature that was not entirely stable in its current form.
Cedric's wand came up.
"Harry—"
"..."
The figure stepped into a thin bar of moonlight.
Peter Pettigrew. The round pale face, the small darting eyes. The bundle in his arms, stirring.
Cedric had heard enough of Pettigrew's story in the previous year's aftermath to know what this meant. His wand hand was steady, but the steadiness was effortful — Harry could see the minute tremor in his forearm, the faint tightening around his eyes.
"Harry—" Cedric shouted. "Harry!" but Harry still had no repones, his shiver got worse as he gaze never left the bundle in Peter's arm.
Cedric stepped forward half a pace so that he stood slightly in front of Harry. The movement was wordless and instinctive, the gesture of a seventeen-year-old who had decided where he stood.
"Stay back!"
Pettigrew stopped walking though his sinister smile grew wider then ever. "Finally, you're here..."
24th June 1995, the Tournament viewing pavilion, 9:47 PM
The silence in the pavilion was absolute.
One moment the Billywig-Camera's six-panel projection had shown Harry and Cedric walking toward the Cup. The next, both panels had gone dark — not static, not distortion, simply dark — and the Cup's plinth stood empty in the clearing.
Hundreds of people stared at two blank panels.
Ron turned to Hermione. Hermione turned to Draco. Draco had already turned to both of them.
"Portkey," all three said, at the same moment, in three different tones — Ron's disbelieving, Hermione's horrified, Draco's cold.
At the judges' table, Bagman had risen from his seat. Dumbledore's face had gone the particular still quality that had only seen once — at the foot of the Chamber of Secrets stairs — and which meant that the Headmaster had just arrived at a conclusion he had hoped never to reach.
Fudge was talking, loudly, to no one in particular about procedural irregularities.
Hermione was already scanning the crowd.
Sam was gone. She had been watching his section since the Adaeze incident, when his face had shifted into the Department-in-the-field attention — she had been watching him watching the projection with the focused assessment of an Unspeakable cataloguing possibilities.
He was gone. So was Sirius. So was Lupin. All three, vanished from the pavilion in the space of two blank panels.
Then — a sound from within the maze.
Not the sounds of spells, not the controlled detonations of Champions and obstacles. A different sound — broader, sharper, the sound of things being destroyed rather than creatures being fought.
From the maze's furthest monitoring panel, still active, figures appeared. Dozens of them, dark-cloaked, moving through the maze corridors with no care for concealment — moving toward the pavilion entrance, blasting the hedges apart as they came. Touch-activated portkeys, Hermione registered — they had come in groups, small contact-detonations, and they had come armed and moving.
Dark wizards. Many of them.
At their head, a single figure moved with the composed unhurried purpose of a man who had arrived precisely where he intended to be. He paused at the Billywig-Camera mounted at the maze's inner junction — paused, and turned toward it, and looked directly into it.
The thin-mouthed face and pale amused eyes of Mordred Slythra regarded approximately hundreds of people across the magical projection feed.
He smiled.
He raised his wand and destroyed the camera, and the panel went dark.