Chapter 76: The Third Task
When Fleur finally entered the maze, the noise of the crowd outside died away almost instantly. The inside of the maze was almost whisper-quiet, suggesting sound dampening spells were being used to keep the various creatures from accidentally revealing their presence in nearby passages- and ensuring every meeting was a surprise.
She was only the second Champion to enter. Silversong was in the lead, but only by two points. Cedric Diggory was third, by another two points behind Fleur- then came Krum some five points behind him, and Harry was last by a margin of about eighty points. Which was impressive in its own right, Fleur had to concede- he hardly had around twenty points, out of the total hundred and twenty that could have been awarded so far.
As such, since the first person to touch the Triwizard Cup at the center of the maze would be merely guaranteed full marks, not a win of the Tournament… Harry was already a goner- but if she messed up enough to lose just a few points and Krum caught it, or she didn’t mess up and either of the other two got it, she would lose.
Her only chance to win was, in the end, to touch the Cup first- and hope that Silver lost at least three points throughout the Maze.
Which, she was certain that Madame Maxime would- unfairly, if she had to- ensure that happened if she got the Cup first. She wasn’t proud to say that, but the chances of Silver earning a perfect score when she didn’t get it first were already pretty slim, even if Harry got it.
But she was confident that Silver would score higher than her if neither of them got the Cup first, unless Madame Maxime decided to be as heavy-handed as Karkaroff, she supposed- but she knew that wasn’t going to happen. Karkaroff was evidently supporting Krum more through his lopsided scoring than anything else, but Madame Maxime had promised Fleur that she wouldn’t fudge the score more than a little bit, and even then only if she had to.
And if Fleur got the Cup… She wouldn’t have to. This was the kind of thing that would be difficult to earn a perfect score in.
She took a deep breath, pointing her wand straight up in the air. The same spells she had used a month prior to get a birds-eye view… Then her much more complex Arithmantic spell, which would solve the maze and identify all the hazards.
It took about six seconds for the spell to finish its task, by which point she was approaching the first intersection.
So, she picked a series of hazards she wanted to avoid entirely- starting with the ones she didn’t recognize, those giant manticore-like things- and organized the rest in order of priority… and selected the ‘best’ route after that. All the hazards along it could be dealt with quickly and easily, even if it was a somewhat longer path than necessary.
She grinned, turned right, and started jogging.
Fleur had to conclude that the hardest part of her solution to the maze was that a lot of the hazards moved around. She’d already had to revise her path a couple of times because of that- but now, she was getting close to a fairly easy- albeit still a little bit long- shot to the Cup, where there weren’t any of those moving hazards in a position to get in her way.
She fired a blasting charm down a side passage as she trotted past, taking only a half-second to aim properly. The giant spider that was just a few paces away from the intersection took it straight to the face- and that would slow anything down.
Especially since she almost immediately made two more turns, while monitoring its motion through her birds-eye view.
A burst of red sparks caught her attention, somewhere on the other side of the maze. A closer glance showed it was Krum, battling desperately with the dragon Fleur had avoided as he backed into a dead end. The dragon seemed to be dodging some of his spells- was it, perhaps, the talking dragon that had been helping with the First Task?
She got a very sudden feeling of dread… and before she even realized what had happened, had whirled to the side, wand arm flying high over her head.
A bright red spell bolt flashed past just inches from her chest, in a narrow miss.
She paused for a half-second, then looked back the way it had come.
Only uninterrupted hedge.
She checked the overhead view… then dodged to the side as another one came roaring at her. There! That-
That was Professor Moody, a member of the safety team! Why was he shooting spells at her?
She twisted suddenly, and felt an invisible spell bolt flash past, far faster. How was she able to dodge them so accurately, when she couldn’t even see him? Or the spell bolt? Her overhead view wasn’t good enough to tell her where he was aiming!
She pointed her own wand at the point of the hedge that it was coming out of. “Stupefy!”
Her scarlet spell bolt smashed into a green one of his, deflecting downwards while his went up into the sky. She paused. It looked like her aim was true- which was, if she was honest with herself, far better than she had expected.
She concentrated. Dodged to the side, narrowly dodging another invisible bolt- “Stupefy!”
The Defense Against the Dark Arts professor slashed his wand through the air, stopping her spell cold just a couple feet short of him. She winced. She would need… No, she could do it without that.
She aimed slightly up, and concentrated. It was a highly advanced technique that Hermione had been teaching her. “Stupefy!”
Then she swept her wand down to point at his feet- and completed the silent incantation for a lightless Earthquake Charm. It wasn’t a very simple charm at all- especially when casting it simultaneous to another, and was at reduced power because it was the second to be released- but it did the trick. He lost his footing moments before her stunning spell reached him, and was unable to block it in time.
He fell flat to the ground, instantly unconscious.
“Fleur has good aim,” Hailey observed, interrupting Madame Maxime’s furious complaints about sabotaging her Champion, which were already far louder than Karkaroff’s sulking over Krum giving up.
“She does,” Dumbledore agreed, pocketing his wand; he had been about to hit Crouch-Moody with a stunner when Fleur had managed to down him herself.
“And a quick mind, too,” Hailey continued, and Madame Maxime looked questioningly at her. “Unless I miss my guess, she cast a tripping charm of some sort on a silent incantation simultaneous to the verbal stunner, to ensure he could not block it. That’s a very advanced technique- and one that was brought to wand magic by Twilight Sparkle just a couple years ago, would you believe it. She called it multicasting.”
“Holy Smokes,” Percy muttered. “But why was Moody-?”
“Good question,” Hailey answered, with an odd hint of finality in her voice. “We can ask him later.”
“Where has Fleur gone?” Bagman muttered, looking at the array of remote viewing windows floating in the air in front of him, and duplicated in front of each judge. Even he had given up on Harry after the second task.
Hailey looked at them. “If the tracking spell can’t find her, that means she’s using a powerful concealment charm,” Hailey observed. “She’s trying to make sure that doesn’t happen again. It should work its way through that charm in a few seconds.”
“I thought Silver was the one that could turn invisible,” Percy scowled.
“She is,” Hailey agreed. “Even though she hasn’t today. I wasn’t aware Fleur knew any such spells.”
Madame Maxime gazed silently but anxiously at the windows.
Fleur was running. She had changed her path again- this time, it was a least time course to the center of the maze. There was a Sphinx along the way- but she was doing her best to stay hidden… It was time to put her Talent to the test.
She had to make sure no other Professors could attack her short of her goal, and try to sabotage her. Durmstrang was already out of action- and if she fell for whatever reason, so would Beauxbatons, giving Hogwarts a guaranteed win- unless all three of their Champions fell. She wouldn’t be surprised if Harry fell… but both Cedric and Silver were too confident, and too strong for that. They, like her, were evidently well-suited to the Tournament.
She dodged past behind the Sphinx, which was pacing back and forth across the pathway, while it was looking the other way, before fairly flying down the path and turning right about at the moment that the Sphinx turned to look in her direction.
Then she made one last turn, jumped a giant, unconscious spider and a similarly unconscious one of the manticore-like things, and bolted for the Cup.
Both Silver and Cedric were there. Cedric looked tired, but Silver was even more so- she was leaning on him for support.
It looked like they were going to try to do it both at once- even though, since they weren’t already tying, that would mean Silver would win.
She ran like the wind, and felt her stealthiness break as she got close, about a second before she closed one hand on the rim of the cup and braced the other against the pedestal to stop her mad charge. She couldn’t tell if she was first, or if they were, though.
Both the Hogwarts students gave small starts as they turned to look at her..
“What the-?” Silver asked.
“So, uh,” Fleur muttered, looking at the cup, then looked up at them. “Who was first?” For some reason, she was completely unexhausted.
Cedric looked down at it, and paused. “No idea,” he muttered.
“I’m sure Hailey has a charm prepared,” Silver gasped. “I couldn’t tell.”
Wham.
Harry came charging out of nowhere, surprising all three of them, and slammed head-first into the Cup before any of them could stop him. It glowed instantly, and Fleur felt the gut-wrenching feeling of a portkey. And she hated portkeys, with a passion- they were always so painful!
“... The hell?” Percy muttered, squinting at the viewing windows in front of him as all four finishing Champions, and the Cup itself, vanished into thin air.
“That… That wasn’t supposed to be a portkey,” Bagman scowled, leaning close.
Hailey nodded. “And the one that put the Cup in the middle of the maze was the same teacher as the one that attacked Fleur,” she observed calmly. “I think we have an imposter.”
“That looked like a two-way portkey,” Dumbledore said suddenly.
“You can tell?” Maxime asked.
He nodded. “The color is different,” he answered, then took a deep breath. “When they return- if it is they that return- we must find out where they went, and what happened.”
“Agreed,” Hailey answered. “That said, Krum disqualified himself when he panicked a bit too quickly, and all four other Champions touched the Cup, so I believe we can agree that this Task is complete, right?” She looked around at the other Judges. Some of them sighed, a couple nodded, and Karkaroff just glowered. “Alright,” Hailey continued. “That means we can decide what their scores are, right?”
“But who touched the Cup first?” Percy asked.
“It looked like Fleur to me,” Maxime scowled.
“It was too close for me to tell,” Hailey answered. “Fortunately, I placed a touch order charm on that cup before it was ever taken into the Maze, so it will tell us exactly who touched it first- and if we simply score the Champions as if none of them had touched it first, we can decide which Champions would be winners if they were the first to touch it, and which cannot be winners even if they were the first.”
They looked at one another, and sighed.
“Two for all of them,” Karkaroff barked irritably.
“Just because Krum got disqualified,” Hailey observed, and glanced at the others. “If he’s not willing to score them even remotely fairly, we can safely ignore the scores he gives us, right?”
Dumbledore looked at her. “Why?”
“Because we can all agree that Harry was not the first to touch it, right?”
“Not by a long shot,” Bagman nodded. “A good three seconds, I think.”
“The difference between Silver’s and Cedric’s scores is all of four points, with Fleur in the middle,” Hailey continued. “If Silver loses five or more points, Fleur loses three or more, and Cedric loses zero or more, then whoever got the cup won. However, if Silver lost less than two points, Fleur cannot win- and if Silver lost less than four or Fleur lost less than two, Cedric cannot win. I believe they all gave us exemplary performances, possibly pushing the scores up into that territory, and would like to determine which Champions could have won, and which champions cannot have won- and of course, if one of them can’t win but got the Cup, who won.”
There was a pause.
“And Karkaroff has been rather biased in the scoring,” Maxime observed, then sighed.
Karkaroff glared at her, then rose from his seat. “Fine,” he snarled, and stormed away.
Her motion to ignore his scores, and treat his scoring as a blanket ten, was shortly passed unanimously. Shortly afterwards, Dumbledore’s motion to offer Krum a perfect score for a disqualified Champion- a mere thirty out of sixty- was also passed unanimously, since it really wasn’t possible for Krum to have landed in anything except fourth place- just like, even before the Task had begun, it wasn’t possible for Harry to have landed in anything except last place.
In the end, Fleur had a perfect score even without the Cup; all of the remaining judges were just so impressed with the way she had stopped Moody on her own, and the speed she had subsequently demonstrated in her flight to the Cup- on top of her total lack of backtracking, which suggested she had planned ahead in a way none of the others had. That meant that Cedric couldn’t have won.
Silver had scored fifty-two points, between them; she had demonstrated good resolve, but had taken the same wrong turn twice at one point and had struggled, with Cedric, to defeat Hagrid’s Blast-Ended Screwt and the Acromantula. She had also, not long before that, let out a horrifying scream of pain and flattened a good-sized circle of the maze in a powerful discharge of her Equestrian magic. She, like Cedric, had been saved from a much lower score by her willingness to team up with other Champions to beat monsters neither could defeat alone.
Cedric had scored fifty-five points; he hadn’t repeated his wrong turns, and hadn’t had such a powerful display of energy, but none of the remaining judges felt that his performance had warranted a ten-point score.
As a result, if Silver had gotten the Cup, she had won; otherwise, Fleur had. If Cedric had gotten the cup, he was second- otherwise, third.
Hailey sighed. “It’s really too bad Krum didn’t react well to the dragon encounter,” she muttered. “He was doing really well up to that point, and I think he would’ve stood a pretty good chance of winning himself, had Moody not attacked Fleur, despite being in fourth place going in.”
“Really?” Maxime asked.
Hailey nodded. “He was on a faster track towards the Cup than Silver and Cedric,” she answered, “and had Fleur not been attacked, she not only would have arrived last- having not started running like that- but likely wouldn’t have demonstrated multicasting for us, meaning she probably wouldn’t have gotten a perfect score.” She sighed. “Well. I suppose all we can do now is wait for them to reappear, right? I’m pretty sure portkeys are untraceable, even with Equestrian magic.”
“Not unless you get it as it is leaving,” Dumbledore sighed. “A one-second window.”
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Pity it wasnt corn on the cob, then it wouldve been an amazing maze of maize?
And given Crouch, a Malaise?
Poor Cedric, or is Harry going to Substitute there also?
As for a 1 secnd window, isnt there a selection of tempora spells to detect, interject and redirect possible maybe?
11284406
Heh...Amazing maize maze malaise.
And if, on top of the walls being made of corn instead of hedge, the third task took place in May, then even before the malaise upon the maze that is Crouch, we'd have had May's amazing maize maze. A title worthy of a trial in a death game for gifted teens, at least in the backwards world that is Wizarding Britain.
RIP Crouch.
11284416
Well... In canon, it took place in late June.
Here, it took place on- gasp- Saturday, May 24th, 2025. The exact date isn't mentioned in story (except in the suspicious number of detentions Morning gave Pansy Parkinson for throwing Silver's name into the Goblet of Fire back in Chap. 56), but it's in my notes.
That said... it is still a hedge maze, sorry.
Nooo, cliffhanger on the portkeyyyy!
And that's a lot of cool lore there in the A/N