"Don't mind me—" Fleur said with a light, somewhat breathless giggle as she stood on the second glass panel, trying to ease the tension. "I was just teasing you, Granger. You know how I am."
But Hermione remained completely unmoved, her face was stern and unyielding as granite. She wasn't in the mood for games.
Back on the platform behind them, Ron leaned close to Harry's ear, his breath warm as he whispered cautiously, "I'd bet all my Sickles on it, Harry—every last one. Hermione only has it out for Fleur because of Professor Watson. You know she seems to got a bit of a crush on him."
Harry and Ron both knew perfectly well that Hermione admired Professor Watson in much the same way she had once idolized the fraud Gilderoy Lockhart with an intensity that bordered on hero worship. And Fleur, being beautiful and French and confident, probably seemed like competition to them.
"Hermione just doesn't appreciate Fleur's flamboyant style," Harry said, shaking his head in disagreement as he offered his own opinion, trying to be diplomatic. "It's a personality clash, not jealousy."
After Fleur stepped onto the second panel, testing it with small bounces to confirm its stability, the next few steps ahead became more visible to her keen eyes in the dim light.
The glass panels caught and reflected the starlight in strange ways. Fleur extended her arm back to Hermione, reaching across the gap, and the two girls replicated their previous movements. They crouched down once again in synchronized motion.
After a moment's hesitation, biting her lip as she studied both options, Fleur chose the right path once more.
She held her breath and carefully extended one foot from the left side of the second step to the right side of the third step. Her leg stretched across the void, trembling slightly. Her eyes were fixed intently on the third glass panel that reflected two shooting stars in its surface, creating ghostly double images.
Another tense silence followed as everyone held their breath, creating a vacuum of sound. Time seemed to stop.
This time, mercifully, Fleur's luck held. The step she had chosen didn't shatter beneath her weight. It held firm.
Now they had confirmed the correct safe panels for the first three steps. A pattern was beginning to emerge or was it just random chance?
After two consecutive successes, the group waiting anxiously on the platform finally relaxed visibly. They could now be certain that Viktor's proposed method was feasible and could work. Though painfully slow and exhausting, it was at least safe.
The first sequence of steps was finally clear. After some quick discussion in hushed voices, the boys made the unanimous decision to let Luna go first down the confirmed path.
Fleur and Hermione continued to forge a path forward using their difficult and clumsy method, like pioneers hacking through jungle. Two or three grueling minutes later, their arms aching and their nerves tattered, they had successfully identified a safe passage sufficient for everyone to climb onto the glass walkway without falling.
Following Luna's light-footed steps was Viktor, his heavy body was moving carefully. Then came Cedric, limping slightly from his earlier injuries. Harry came behind Cedric, and Ron brought up the rear as he climbed onto the walkway last, looking nervously down at the darkness below.
It had to be said that the environment Professor Watson had created around them was quite intimidating and terrifyingly effective, actually.
Though they all knew intellectually it wasn't actually possible to die from falling off the walkway, the sense of desolation this space evoked was overwhelming. It was so similar to the cosmic void of actual space, it felt remarkably, disturbingly real.
Especially as they slowly made their way up more than a dozen steps, moving in single file line ants on a thread, the platform behind them gradually receded. It resembled a lone boat drifting away from a light source in the deep midnight sea, getting smaller and smaller until it was barely visible.
The indescribable terror of standing helplessly above a bottomless abyss, with nothing but fragile glass between them and infinity, was overwhelming.
Spending too long in such oppressive circumstances, subjected to such psychological pressure, the tormented contestants might even develop a dangerous impulse to jump into the abyss seeking release from the tension.
"How far away is that bloody thing, exactly?" Viktor couldn't help but complain after they had arduously advanced another five or six exhausting steps. His voice was tense with frustration. "It doesn't seem any closer!"
The mysterious glowing object in everyone's field of vision seemed somewhat brighter than before, slightly larger perhaps. But they still couldn't accurately judge its precise location in this distorted space. It appeared both tantalizingly within reach and infinitely distant at the same time, like a mirage in the desert.
Hermione let out a tired sigh after helping Fleur up to the next safe step, her breath was in ragged gasps. She rubbed her aching arms, trying to massage some life back into the muscles. Her biceps were cramping, her fingers had turned stiff.
Fleur wasn't faring much better. The arm that Hermione had been gripping so forcefully ached terribly, throbbing with each heartbeat. It bore dark purple, palm-shaped bruises that would take days to fade. But she said nothing.
"I can replace you, Hermione," Luna said gently, reaching forward to touch Hermione's shoulder with a light, reassuring touch. "I've had the same training as you under Professor Watson, Hermione. I can do this."
After a moment's hesitation, conflicting emotions across her face, Hermione shook her head in refusal. "You're injured, Luna. Your ribs. This would make your wounds tear open and bleed. I just need to rest for a bit. Five minutes."
The advancing group temporarily paused, everyone was sitting or crouching on their respective panels.
In such an oppressive, suffocating environment, no one felt much like chatting or making jokes. Instead, they instinctively sought out light, any light to focus on. And the brightest place in this entire space was undoubtedly the endless starry sky above their heads, that river of light flowing over their heads.
Fleur muttered something under her breath in French while gently rubbing the bruises on her arm, wincing at the tender spots. She gazed up at the shooting stars occasionally streaking across the artificial sky like silver tears.
Suddenly, frowning in concentration, she noticed that the meteors falling from the distant galaxy were beginning to drop one by one. Before, it had seemed like one meteor, then two alternating in sequence—no, wait, two by two? No, that wasn't quite right either. Sometimes two meteors, sometimes one? Or was there no pattern at all?
Fleur shook her head, dismissing this pointless question from her mind. It was probably just random. Her exhausted brain was seeing patterns where none existed.
"Let's continue," Hermione said.
The initial joy of discovering their forward strategy had long since left Hermione's heart, burned away by exhaustion. Now she only wanted to finish this grueling challenge as quickly as possible and get off this terrifying walkway. Every minute felt like an hour.
The group silently stood up from where they had been sitting cross-legged on the glass panels, bones cracking, and continued forward in grim determination.
The sudden heavy feeling in her arm indicated that Fleur had chosen incorrectly. The right panel of the next step was wrong.
Gritting her teeth so hard her jaw ached, Hermione pulled Fleur up forcefully onto the left glass panel, her shoulders were now screaming in protest. Her arms felt like they were on fire.
"Sorry—" Fleur gasped twice, panting, and said softly to Hermione with regret. She had seen the pained expression that flashed across Hermione's face as she pulled her up though it was quickly suppressed.
"It's entirely a matter of luck," Hermione said, shaking her head as she tried to catch her breath. "Don't apologize. Not your fault."
This was indeed the case. These choices were purely dependent on luck, on random chance, with no discernible pattern that any of them could detect.
Nevertheless, despite knowing this logically, Fleur couldn't help but feel a creeping sense of urgency growing in her chest. She had to make the right choices as much as possible, had to guess correctly, or neither she nor Hermione could hold out much longer.
Staring intently at the two shooting stars reflected on the surface of the next glass panel ahead, Fleur bit her lip hard and once again chose the right side.
CRACK—
The sound of shattering glass that reached her ears made Fleur's heart sink like a stone. She had made another wrong choice. Damn it.
Hermione had already prepared herself mentally to pull Fleur up again. Her body tensed like a coiled spring, her other hand gripping tightly to the edge of the glass panel she stood on with breath held, waiting for the weight—
One second passed. Two seconds. Three seconds...
Hermione released Fleur's arm in confusion, staring in bewilderment at the glass panel beneath Fleur's feet that remained intact.
"It didn't break?" Fleur's expression was equally confused, her eyebrows were drawn together. She turned to look at the identical expressions of surprise and confusion on the faces behind her.
Everyone looked baffled.
"It appears so..." Hermione said hesitantly, uncertainty creeping into her voice. "But then what—"
"Then what was that sound just now?" Viktor asked the question everyone was thinking with concern.
CRACK!
At that precise moment, as if in answer, the same distinctive sound appeared again from somewhere in the darkness. The young wizards, who had heard it many times before during their crossing, could confirm with absolute certainty this was indeed the sound of glass panels shattering.
Everyone's numb, exhausted emotions were suddenly jolted like an electric shock. Their dull, tired faces now showed alarm and horror!
"What's happening? Where is that sound coming from?" Harry's throat tightened with fear as he called out loudly, his voice was cracking slightly. "Is someone else out here?"
Everyone lined up instinctively checked the glass panels beneath their own feet with frantic looks, but found nothing wrong. Their panels were solid, and intact.
In less than ten seconds, the sound of shattering glass came again, and this time it sounded much clearer!
The crisp cracking sound emerging from the boundless darkness behind them struck like thunder through everyone's racing thoughts, making them dizzy and disoriented with sudden adrenaline.
"I know!" Hermione was the first to react, her mind made the connection. Her gaze focused on the direction they had come from, back toward the now-distant platform, as she shouted in utter horror, "The safe glass panels we've already crossed are shattering! The path behind us is disappearing!"
A second of absolute silence stretched like eternity!
"How can this be!" Ron turned around hastily, whipping his head back, staring in terror at the darkness behind them that their vision couldn't penetrate.
"Probably," Hermione said through gritted teeth, "the time is up. This competition likely has a hidden time limit. Once time runs out, the walkway beneath our feet will begin to shatter in sequence! It's chasing us!"
"What do we do now!" Harry panicked too, his voice rising. That glowing object was still far away!
"We need to move quickly," Cedric shouted urgently.
Physical exhaustion would be ignored under extreme tension, pushed aside by adrenaline and fear.
Hermione stepped onto the same level as Fleur in one long stride, saying anxiously, "There's no need to be selective anymore. There's no time to test carefully. The probability is the same either way. From now on, we'll all take the right-side steps!"
Fleur drew a sharp breath and nodded vigorously. "Agreed. Let's go!"
Everyone's nerves were stretched to their limits. But their forward progress was still frustratingly constrained by those incorrect glass panels that would shatter and send people falling.
Yet the continuous shattering sounds behind them showed no mercy, ringing out like death knells, one after another.
CRACK. CRACK. CRACK.
Several minutes later, the glass panel five positions behind them disintegrated into powder before Ron's despairing eyes and plummeted into the abyss!
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