24th June 1995, the Hogwarts grounds, outside the burning maze, 9:52 PM
The maze was on fire and the night was full of curses.
What had been, twenty minutes earlier, a warm June evening of cheering families and golden light had become a battlefield. The dark-cloaked figures who had come through the touch-portkeys had spread out across the trampled ground between the maze and the pavilion, and the air above the grass was streaked now with the venomous colours of combat magic — red, green, white, a sickly yellow — crossing and recrossing in the smoke that rolled off the burning hedges.
Sirius Black moved through it like a man who had been waiting thirteen years for something to hit.
He deflected a slashing curse with a snap of his wand, pivoted, and dropped the wizard who had cast it with a Stupefy that took him square in the chest. Beside him, Remus Lupin fought with the contained economy of a man who never wasted a movement — shield, counter, shield, a precise Expelliarmus that tore a wand from an opponent's hand and sent its owner scrambling.
"How," Sirius snarled between casts, ducking a jet of orange light, "in the name of Merlin's left boot, did they smuggle in this many touch-portkeys? You can't just carry two dozen active portkeys through Hogwarts wards—"
"They had inside help, Sirius." Lupin's voice was tight, his eyes never leaving the advancing line. "Someone keyed them. Someone with access to the ward-schedule."
"Ethan should've—" Sirius dropped another foe and immediately found two more closing on him. "Ethan should've seen this—"
"Ethan has a plan."
The voice came from their left — Samantheus Faramundo, fighting at the centre of a knot of his Unspeakables, his charcoal field-robe scorched at one shoulder, his wand moving in the long fluid arcs of a man who had been duelling at the top tier for fifteen years. Around him, the Department team held a tight defensive formation, the silver lemniscate insignia on their breasts catching the firelight, their layered shields overlapping in a discipline that was holding the line where Sirius and Lupin's individual brilliance could not.
"Ethan always has a plan," Sam said again, firmly, dispatching a witch who had lunged at his flank. "What I want to know is what in the seven hells Cornelius thought he was doing sending three Aurors. Three. And two of them barely qualified."
A few yards off, a tall bald Auror with a gold earring — Kingsley Shacklebolt — was holding his own corner of the fight with deep unhurried competence, a young witch with violently pink hair beside him moving fast and clumsy-graceful, and a third, younger still, white-faced and casting as fast as he could manage.
"In Cornelius's defence," Kingsley called across the gap, his deep voice almost amused even as he shielded, "he didn't believe there was anything to send Aurors for. Right up until the maze caught fire." He felled an opponent with an offhand flick. "Dumbledore will be with us shortly. Hold the line until then."
"Wotcher — duck!" the pink-haired witch shouted, and Sam ducked, and a green bolt passed through the space his head had been.
Sirius, breathing hard, caught a flicker of movement at the edge of the firelight — a figure that was not fighting. A figure standing behind the surging line of dark wizards, half-wreathed in the smoke pouring off the maze, watching the chaos unfold with the composed pleasure of a man at the theatre.
Mordred Slythra.
Something in Sirius went white and cold.
"MORDRED!"
He charged.
"Sirius — no—" Lupin lunged after him, caught a glancing curse on his shoulder for the trouble, swore, and fought to follow.
Sirius drove through the line, scattering dark wizards left and right, his wand a blur. "WHERE ARE THEY?" he bellowed across the smoke. "Harry — Cedric — WHERE ARE THEY, you—"
Mordred Slythra regarded him.
He did not raise his wand. He did not flee. He simply watched Sirius come, with the thin-lipped, faintly amused expression of a man whose attention was, in truth, somewhere else entirely.
'The Seer,' Mordred was thinking, beneath the surface of that composed face. 'Where is the Seer?'
He had been searching the chaos for the one figure he genuinely feared since the moment the portkeys fired — the man Harry Potter's mind had been so carefully shielded by, the one whose interference could unmake the whole evening's careful work. And the Seer was not here. Was not in the fight. Was not visible anywhere on the grounds.
Which meant — perhaps — the boy was already beyond reach. Which meant the plan had, in at least its essential part, worked.
Sirius reached striking distance and fired — Reducto, Stupefy, Incarcerous — and Mordred slid aside from each with the unhurried grace of a man stepping out of the rain, his cloak swirling, his sneer never wavering.
"Tell me where my godson is," Sirius said, low and shaking with fury, "or I will take you apart."
"Black," Mordred said, almost fondly, as though greeting an old acquaintance. "You always did arrive at the wrong moment."
And he turned, robes flaring, and stepped backward into the burning mouth of the maze, into the heat and the smoke and the wild dancing shadows, and was gone.
"MORDRED!"
A jet of green light from Sirius's left forced him to throw himself flat. Lupin was at his side a half-second later, hauling him up by the collar, shield raised over them both.
"He's gone, Sirius. He's gone — focus. The line. Hold the line."
Sirius, his chest heaving, his eyes still fixed on the place Mordred had vanished, let Lupin pull him back into the fight.
24th June 1995, the Champion's starting ground, 9:54 PM
Albus Dumbledore stood over the Triwizard Cup, which lay on its side in the trampled grass, its faint gold glow extinguished, its portkey-charm spent.
The Headmasters and Headmistresses of the five schools were gathered around him, wands drawn, their faces grim in the firelight that flickered off the maze beyond. Cedric Diggory stood among them, shaking, his eyes going again and again to the burning hedges and the flashes of battle on the grounds.
"Minerva," Dumbledore said quietly. "Take Mr Diggory to the castle. Take the others — all the staff, all the students still on the grounds. Get them inside the wards. Now."
Professor McGonagall's mouth set in a hard line. "Albus, I am not leaving you to walk into that—"
"You are." His voice was gentle and absolutely immovable. "I need every person who can hold a ward holding the castle. I need the children safe. And I need to go into the maze."
McGonagall held his gaze for a long moment. Whatever she saw there decided her. She gave one short, furious nod, took Cedric Diggory firmly by the arm, and turned him toward the castle.
"But Harry—" Cedric protested, twisting back.
"Move, Mr Diggory," McGonagall said, and there was a crack in her voice that silenced him.
Dumbledore watched them go. Then he turned to face the maze.
The hedges burned. Fire ran along the high green walls in bright ribbons, and the smoke rose black against the bruised twilight, and somewhere within that maze of flame and shadow were a great many dark wizards and at least one man Albus Dumbledore had been hunting, in one form or another, for the better part of his long life.
His blue eyes were very still.
'What will you do, Ethan?' he thought. 'You have seen something. You always have...'
And then, his deep blue robes whispering against the scorched grass, Albus Dumbledore stepped into the burning maze.
24th June 1995, the Hogwarts Campus, 9:56 PM
Cedric was barely through the great doors before he realised that almost no one had actually gone inside.
The Entrance Hall and the lawns before it were crowded with students and families who had refused, or simply failed, to be herded indoors. They stood in anxious clusters, faces turned toward the orange glow of the burning maze in the distance, the night above them flickering with the far-off colours of the battle.
He saw the Weasleys — Molly with her arms around Ginny, Arthur and Bill flanking them, the twins for once not joking. He saw Harry's Gryffindor roommates pressed against the railings. He saw Colin and Dennis Creevey, even now, raising their cameras with shaking hands. He saw Ron Weasley with both arms around a sobbing Lavender, murmuring to her, his own face white. He saw Hermione Granger weeping silently into Viktor Krum's chest, Viktor's arm tight around her, his leg in a hasty splint. He saw Draco Malfoy and the Greengrass sisters standing together with complicated, frightened expressions.
And, before he could take any of it in, a small figure with long dark hair was flying across the lawn at him.
"Cedric!"
Cho Chang hit him at full speed, her arms around his neck, her face wet against his shoulder. "You're alive, you're — are you hurt, are you—"
"I'm fine," he managed, holding her, his voice cracking. "Cho, I'm fine. Go on — find your friends, I have to—"
She checked his face once more, nodded, and stepped back, wiping her eyes.
He found his parents next — Amos seizing him in a crushing embrace, all his pavilion bluster gone, just a frightened father holding his son; his mother's hands on his face. "Cedric. Cedric, thank God—"
"Dad. Mum. I'm all right." But his eyes were already going past them, because he had to find someone, he had to tell someone, Harry was still there — "Where—"
He didn't have to look far.
Harry's friends were already converging on him.
"Cedric — where's Harry?" Hermione had broken free of Viktor, her voice raw, tears still streaking her face. "Where is he, is he—"
"What happened?" Ron demanded, and there was a fury in it that was the only thing keeping the terror down. "Why isn't he with you — what happened to him—"
Cedric told them, in broken fragments — the Cup, the portkey, the graveyard, Pettigrew, the thing in the bundle, the dozens of dark wizards. He watched the colour drain from their faces as he spoke. He watched Draco Malfoy go rigid and grey, watched something close behind the boy's eyes, watched Daphne Greengrass lay a hand on Draco's arm as though she understood exactly what he was hearing and why it struck him so hard. He watched the Weasleys, drawn in close now, go silent and stricken, Molly's lips moving in something that might have been a prayer.
And then, through the cluster of faces, he met the eyes of Luna Lovegood.
He nearly took a step back.
The dreamy, serene girl he half-remembered from the year was gone. In her place stood someone cold and sharp and very still, her grey eyes fixed on him with an intensity that was almost painful, her hand closed white-knuckled around the necklace at her throat.
She had been standing apart from the others. He understood, dimly, that she had been doing something — her lips had been moving, her fingers working at the pendant — and that whatever it was had not given her what she wanted.
'She's been trying to find him,' Cedric realised, though he could not have said how he knew. 'By some craft of her own. And it hasn't worked.'
It had not worked. Luna had cast every reading she knew — the methods Ethan had been quietly teaching her these two years, the careful disciplines of true divination that she had never told anyone she was learning — and the Sight had given her almost nothing. A direction that dissolved when she reached for it. A place that would not hold its shape. Only one thing had come through clear, and she clung to it the way Harry, three hundred miles away, was clinging to his Cogitation:
He was alive.
He was alive, and he was suffering, and she could not find him.
She had hoped Ethan's Sight was clearer than hers. Then she had seen Mordred Slythra's face on the projection feed, smiling into the camera, and her hope had wavered like a candle in a draught.
"Cedric Diggory," Luna said. Her voice was low and very quiet and it cut straight through the noise of the crowd. "Think. Carefully. Is there anything — anything at all — that could tell us where you were? A name on a stone. A church. A village sign. Anything."
Cedric shook his head helplessly. "I don't — it was dark, it was a graveyard, there was a church, I don't know where, I couldn't see any—"
He stopped.
His eyes went wide.
"The Cup," he breathed.
Luna's head came up.
"The Cup," Cedric said again, faster. "It's a portkey — it took us there — portkeys can be traced, can't they, they leave a — your people, Atid Stella, the Department, they could read where it went—"
For the first time since he had landed back on the grass, something moved in Luna's cold face. Not hope, exactly. Purpose.
"Yes," she said. "They can."
She caught his sleeve.
"Show me where it is. Now. Before the professors move it."
And the two of them slipped away from the crowd, around the edge of the anxious gathering, ducking low past the staff who were still trying to herd people indoors, running back toward the dark of the grounds and the place where a tarnished gold Cup lay forgotten in the grass.
24th June 1995, the Atid Stella command tent, Hogwarts east grounds, 9:58 PM
Inside the tent, it was very quiet.
Verrona Rogeiros stood at the centre of it, and around her, in a silent defensive ring, stood every Atid Stella employee who had come to Hogwarts for the Task — perhaps a dozen of them, wands drawn, faces composed, holding the tent against whatever might come through its flap. Verrona's own wand was in her hand. Her eyes moved, every few seconds, to the far end of the tent.
To Ethan.
Ethan Esther stood alone before the single remaining screen — the others had gone dark when Mordred destroyed the Billywig-Camera, but this one, fed by a projector high above the maze, still showed the battle on the grounds in flickering aerial silver. He watched it without moving. Sam, holding the line with his Unspeakables. Sirius, charging and being hauled back by Lupin. The dark-cloaked figures surging and falling and surging again.
At his feet, Osian paced — the great fur of him shook restlessly and agitated with his movement, his eyes glinting, a low unhappy humph escaping him every few seconds. On Ethan's shoulder, Jasper had abandoned all his usual brightness; the small golden Snidget sat hunched and still, his feathers fluffed, making a thin distressed sound.
In Ethan's hand, his golden pocket watch hung from its chain — open, level, suspended in the air a foot below his palm. It was not moving. The chain hung dead straight, the watch utterly still, defying every law that should have set it swinging.
Ethan's amber eyes had gone deep and far and dark.
The Sight had him.
It was not clear — it never was, not the way the stories pretended. He could not see the place. He could not read a name from a stone or count the gravestones or name the village. The Sight gave him fragments, always fragments, shards of a thing too large to hold: a cold ground, a marble angel, a name half-glimpsed in carved letters. A boy bound and broken against stone, shaking, refusing to scream. The image of his son like that struck Ethan in the chest with a force that would have dropped a lesser man to his knees, and he held it, and he kept looking, because looking away would help no one.
And then, threaded through the fragments, the one thing he had been waiting for:
An opening.
A moment, not yet arrived but near — a narrow seam in the unspooling of what would be, through which a path led. Harry would survive this night. Ethan could see that much, held it like a coal in his cupped hands. Harry would survive. But the Sight did not promise it would be quick, or that the boy would not suffer first, and that — the part where his son hurt and Ethan was not yet able to reach him — was the part that made the watch tremble, just slightly, on its dead-straight chain.
Verrona, watching him from across the tent, did not speak. She knew better than to interrupt the Sight. She only tightened her grip on her wand and waited, and let him work.
Osian humphed aggressively. Jasper made his thin small sound. The battle flickered silver on the screen.
And Ethan Esther, his amber eyes fixed on something no one else in the tent could see, breathed out a single sentence, so quiet that only Jasper, could possibly have heard it.
"Wait for me, Harry."