The gentle breeze wandering lazily through the forest ruffled Harry's messy black hair, making the already-chaotic strands stand up in even more directions.
A full hour had passed since the competition had begun. During that time, the increasingly fierce sunlight had gradually strengthened and finally managed to break through gaps in the thick leaves, casting bizarre, dancing patterns of across the Forbidden Forest floor.
After the assistant from Beauxbatons spoke, both teams fell silent.
How should he put it? Ever since that uncomfortable encounter with Malfoy's hunting party, Harry had been contemplating this exact possibility in the back of his mind.
The classmates from Physical Education class who had entered the competition before dawn weren't simply trying to eliminate all the champions from the game. Rather, they were trying to seize the school badges from the champions' hands.
However, Harry had been convincing himself, clinging to the hope that Professor Watson wouldn't arrange things in such a brutal, unforgiving way.
Because if this was truly the setup, if the badges could be stolen by non-champion teams who didn't even appear on the tracking map, then probably no champion team would be able to achieve final victory.
"Sorry, Fleur," Hermione said, breaking the silence.
She stepped forward. "We need to check your pockets and bags ourselves."
From Hermione's gloomy expression, she clearly wasn't entirely unprepared for this disappointing outcome either.
"As you wish—" Fleur responded.
She wasn't nearly as annoyed or offended by this request as her teammate appeared to be. Instead, demonstrating the poise that came from her Beauxbatons training and aristocratic upbringing, she turned slowly in place like a fashion model on a runway.
She spread her arms wide to both sides, holding them out to show she had nothing to hide, and flashed a teasing smile at Harry. Her eyes were sparkling with mischief.
"You can do the searching yourself, Harry," Fleur said in that same intimate tone she'd used earlier. "I don't mind at all."
'Unless I want to be utterly disgraced!'
Harry grumbled frantically privately, his face was flushing bright red with embarrassment.
He turned away from Fleur facing the opposite direction. Ron, equally uncomfortable with the situation and showing similar redness in his own cheeks, also turned his head aside.
"Petrificus Totalus!" Hermione's crisp voice cut through the awkward moment.
Before cautiously approaching Fleur and Triana to conduct her search, Hermione raised her wand and petrified both girls with quick spells.
It was a prudent security measure, though the action made even the normally good-natured Fleur show displeasure in her frozen blue eyes.
After a thorough moment of searching, Hermione silently retreated several steps.
She waved her wand in a releasing motion, muttering the counter-curse that freed Fleur and Triana from their temporary paralysis. The two girls gasped slightly as movement returned to their frozen limbs.
"Sorry—" Hermione said.
She bent down and placed Fleur and Triana's confiscated wands on the ground between them, then stepped back and nodded apologetically.
Fleur didn't respond to the apology with words. She merely snorted through her upturned nose.
"Harry, Ron—Malfoy and his group will be coming back here very soon," Hermione said urgently.
Her mind was already working through the timing. "We need to leave quickly, get as far from here as possible before they arrive."
Harry swiftly jumped past Fleur and caught up with Hermione and Ron who had already started moving toward the tree line.
But just as he was about to disappear completely into the woods, Harry suddenly stopped moving.
He turned his head to look back at the two girls standing by the burbling stream, their hair were disheveled and tangled, their Beauxbatons uniforms was stained with mud and torn by branches, looking utterly miserab;e.
His green eyes flickered with hesitation.
"Wait, Ron," Harry suddenly called out, making a decision.
Ron, who had been several steps ahead, stopped in his tracks. Hermione stopped as well, more slowly. Both turned to look at Harry with puzzled, questioning expressions.
Harry took two quick steps to reach Ron's back and, amid Ron's startled yelps of confused questions, began rummaging urgently through the backpack still strapped to his shoulders.
His hands dove into the bag, pushing aside the remaining supplies until he found what he was looking for. He pulled out some of their remaining bread slices and meat pies.
"Here you go," Harry said simply.
He walked back toward Fleur and stuffed the food into her surprised hands, pressing the wrapped items against her palms. Under the genuinely astonished gazes of both Beauxbatons girls, Harry spoke calmly.
"Since Malfoy has already taken your school badge, there's no need to be nervous or keep running anymore, right? You can afford to eat something to replenish your energy and rest properly for a while."
With that brief explanation, showing no interest in their gratitude or reaction, he turned sharply and left. He jogged quickly to rejoin his teammates, leaving the two French girls staring after him in stunned silence.
"You're helping our enemies, Harry," Ron said as the three of them began running again, moving deeper into the forest at a rapid pace.
He wrinkled his nose and spoke in a slightly accusatory tone, though there was more curiosity than real disapproval in his voice.
"They're not really a threat anymore anyway, are they?" Harry replied with indifference.
He kept his eyes forward, not looking at Ron. "They don't have a badge to steal from us. What can they actually do?"
A thoughtful glimmer flickered in Hermione's eyes as she ran beside them.
In reality, Fleur's team wasn't entirely without threat or relevance to the competition.
Although they had lost their school badge, the fact that they remained in the competition area without being expelled or transported to safety showed they still had the formal qualification to compete for final victory.
Which meant, logically, they could still seize other teams' school badges if the opportunity presented itself. They weren't completely out of the running.
But Hermione didn't point this potential flaw in Harry's reasoning out loud. She bit back the words before they could emerge. Despite the tactical concern, she also genuinely appreciated Harry's compassionate actions.
When the competition had been going for just over an hour, since they'd first emerged from that terrible darkness into the forest, Hermione had managed to grasp some of the hidden rules underlying the entire structure.
First and most importantly, besides the four official champion teams shown on the tracking map, the Physical Education classmates were also independently seizing school badges for themselves.
Currently, only Slytherin students had appeared in their vicinity. Where the students from the other three houses currently were and what exactly they were doing remained completely unknown.
Second, judging from what had happened to Fleur's team, after a school badge was taken from a champion team, that team wasn't immediately expelled from the competition area as one might expect.
There was apparently still a chance to turn things around, to recover from loss and achieve victory through other means.
Lastly, and this was pure speculation based on observation rather than confirmed fact, Hermione suspected the competition would only truly end under one specific condition: when all four teams' school badges had been successfully seized by someone, whether by other champions or by the hunting parties.
Until that final badge was claimed, the game would continue indefinitely.
At this troubling thought, Hermione's voice became more urgent and slightly higher-pitched with stress.
"We need to hurry, Harry, Ron—" Hermione's breathing had grown heavier from both exertion and rising anxiety.
Her words came in gasps between breaths. "Malfoy and his group have flying broomsticks that give them enormous mobility advantages. We must quickly reach the nearest remaining team, take their school badge before anyone else can, and leave that area immediately.
Otherwise, once that last badge falls into Malfoy's hands, we'll be completely out of the game! We won't have any path to victory!"
Hearing Hermione's urgent reminder, Ron whose entire body ached deeply from an hour of high-intensity running, jumping, and constant position changes gritted his teeth hard against the pain.
He struggled to keep up with his friends' pace despite legs that felt like weights and lungs that burned with each breath.
Only after the three Hogwarts students' figures had completely disappeared from view, did Fleur and Triana finally snap out of their stunned daze.
Fleur looked down at the bread slices and meat pies now in her hands. Her long eyelashes fluttered as she blinked several times.
A smile appeared gradually at the corners of her mouth.
"Quite an interesting little boy, isn't he?" Fleur said softly.
"Undeniably, he possesses some measure of that gentlemanly demeanor and chivalric code that the British love to endlessly boast about," Triana responded with a slight shrug of her shoulders.
Triana walked quickly across the muddy ground to the exact where Hermione had been standing just moments before. Only when her confiscated wand was safely back in her palm and she felt its reassuring warmth and weight, did Triana breathe a deep sigh of relief.
Being wandless in this Forbidden Forest had felt nakedly vulnerable.
Turning around to rejoin her teammate, Triana discovered with some surprise that Fleur had actually taken the time to find a reasonably flat rock to sit on and was already eating what Harry had given them.
Between bites, she was trying to comb through her disheveled, tangled hair with her free hand.
"Are you really planning to rest here, Fleur?" Triana asked with incredulity.
"His suggestion makes perfect sense, doesn't it?" Fleur replied calmly.
She placed the wand Triana had retrieved on her knees, then offered some of the food to her. "We don't have our school badge anymore, so we're not a priority target. Even if someone discovers us here, we genuinely don't need to worry about being attacked."
She took another bite and continued her logical reasoning. "And if we want to take the opportunity to seize someone else's school badge in the time remaining then we need to ensure we have sufficient stamina."
After frowning and thinking through Fleur's words for a long moment, Triana acknowledged her reasoning.
She let out a long breath. While chewing slowly on the bread slice for the first time since entering the Forbidden Forest's depths, she allowed herself to quietly appreciate the scenery surrounding them.
She noticed things she'd been too stressed to see before: the way sunlight came through leaves in golden shafts, the patterns of moss on ancient bark, the musical tone of the stream's burbling voice.
She enjoyed the pleasant sensation of weakened but still warm sunlight washing over her face, soaking into her skin and easing some of the chill that had settled into her bones.
However, despite the temporary peace, Triana couldn't truly relax.
"Do you really think we still have a chance to win, Fleur?" Triana asked after a few minutes of silent eating.
She turned her face toward Fleur. The girl basking peacefully in golden sunlight beside her, with her absolutely beautiful face that could have graced magazine covers, made even her, another girl, someone who should have been immune momentarily dazed.
Triana used her willpower to forcibly dispel the jealousy rising from somewhere deep in her heart. She pushed down the bitter feelings and said with some reluctance, "That girl Judy completely collapsed from the psychological pressure of the darkness. And now there's only the two of us—"
Spontaneously, Bryan's calm smiling face flashed through her mind.
Fleur propped her cheek thoughtfully with one hand, her fingers were somewhat transparent and luminous in the bright sunlight. They tapped irregularly against her face in an unconscious rhythm.
"How should I say this—" Fleur began slowly.
She pursed her lips, organizing complex thoughts. "You saw it too, Triana. The competition system that Bryan designed is remarkably interesting in its structure. Of course, it's also brutally difficult and tests many different qualities."
She paused, her tapping fingers stilling. "But I think that obtaining more school badges to win the competition is somewhat—"
Fleur jumped suddenly to her feet before finishing her sentence. Triana beside her did exactly the same.
The two stared grimly in the direction of the approaching whooshing sound. They maintained their tense vigilance until Malfoy's hunting party landed nearby with thuds of boots.
Seeing it was Fleur and Triana, Draco's pale face clearly showed disappointment.
"You two were the ones showing up on the map just now?" Draco asked in that distinctive drawling voice of his.
Although they had been defeated by this exact group not long ago, Fleur's expression didn't hide her natural pride or show any hint of shame.
She lifted her chin defiantly, meeting Draco's eyes without flinching. "Are you planning to return our school badge to us?"
The Slytherin group let out slight snickers and scoffs at this. They scrutinized the two Beauxbatons girls with teasing eyes.
Pansy Parkinson flexed her wand-holding wrist in what was clearly meant to be a threatening gesture and grinned at Fleur with a smile that showed too many teeth. "You seem rather dissatisfied?" she asked with false cheerfulness.
"You only managed to snatch our school badge from us through cowardly ambush tactics and superior numbers," Triana said coldly, her voice was dripping with disdain.
She glared at the Slytherins with unconcealed contempt. "Why should we be satisfied with such a dishonorable loss?"
"Oh, if that's the case—" Pansy responded, not angered by the accusation but becoming even more excited.
Her eyes lit up with aggressive enthusiasm. She handed her broomstick eagerly to Astoria Greengrass beside her, clearly preparing for a direct confrontation. "I can give you an opportunity to—"
But Astoria only looked at Pansy with calm eyes without taking the offered broomstick. She made no move to enable whatever Pansy was planning.
Draco who had been distracted thinking deeply about why only three light spots now remained visible on the map instead of four glared sideways at Pansy with dissatisfaction.
"Don't forget Professor Watson's rules, Pansy," he said sharply. "We can't attack teams without school badges."
Hearing this, Fleur immediately raised her eyebrows with interest.
Draco knew well that the two girls from Beauxbatons had heard his words. But he didn't particularly care about giving away this advantage.
He merely glanced sideways at Fleur with his typical expression of disdain before mounting his broomstick once again.
"Let's go—" Draco said, turning to address the Slytherin group.
His pale face wore a somewhat twisted, anticipatory smile. "Let's find the next target. I think I've caught Potter's scent."
Thus, with Draco's command, the Slytherin group mounted their broomsticks one after another, preparing to take flight and resume their search of the forest from above.
The forest was densely filled with branches growing in every direction, creating a complex three-dimensional maze. Fleur watched coldly as the Slytherin group carefully maneuvered their brooms to avoid the thickest branches, and slowly rose into the air.
Suddenly, a flash of understanding crossed Fleur's blue eyes.
"Descendo!"
In the next second, she raised her wand high above her head, her clear voice was resounding through the previously quiet forest!
————————————
For More Chapters; patreon.com/FicFrenzy