The shattered glass fragments were like the Grim Reaper closing in step by step. And the sound of exploding glass was like the shriek of Death swinging his scythe!
Hermione and Fleur, already gasping for breath like drowning swimmers, their lungs burning with each intake of air, were doing absolutely everything they could to test the path for the seven members of their four teams, including themselves.
But as the seconds ticked by, Death eventually caught up with them despite their desperate efforts!
CRACK!
The fourth glass panel from the end shattered under its pre-set magical timer, exploding into glittering powder that fell into the void.
"I think I'm done for, Harry!" Ron's voice was hollow, and resigned.
Ron standing at the very back of the line like the carriage of a train heading toward a cliff, his face was drained of all color until he looked almost like a ghost. He said with a mournful expression that tried to be brave, "This is it for me, mate."
Harry didn't offer any words of comfort to the dejected Ron. His throat was too tight.
What good would comfort do in a situation like this anyway? After Ron fell into the abyss, disappeared into that darkness, Harry would be next in line for elimination, separated by only a dozen seconds or so. They were all doomed in order.
"Can you go any faster, Hermione? Fleur?" Harry craned his neck to look desperately toward Hermione at the front of the line, speaking through gritted teeth, his voice was cracking.
His heart was full of shame, and guilt eating at him. He knew that Hermione and Fleur must already be giving it everything they had, pushing themselves to the breaking point. Asking for more was cruel.
"We... huff..." After pulling Fleur up with wheezing, desperate breaths that hurt her chest, Hermione quickly advanced one square herself with trembling legs. Her teeth were clenched so tight her jaw ached, too exhausted to say anything more.
CRACK!
Ron, at the back of the line, had just jumped forward one square with a grunt of effort, putting more distance between himself and elimination when the last glass panel behind him shattered right on cue like clockwork.
"Twelve seconds!" Luna positioned third in the line suddenly spoke up in her dreamy but clear voice.
"The interval between each glass panel shattering is exactly twelve seconds. And if we choose the wrong glass panel during our crossing, it currently also takes about twelve seconds to pull someone back up and advance one square forward."
Luna's words caused everyone's hearts already drowning in panic and desperation to sink even deeper into the cold waters of despair.
Although time was balanced for now, balanced on a knife's edge, Fleur and Hermione's physical strength was limited. Even if the two girls gave it their absolute all, threw every last reserve of energy into this, they couldn't prevent their stamina from draining away like water through cupped hands.
Eventually, they would slow down and then they would all fall.
CRACK!
The second-to-last glass panel shattered into nothingness. When he was one step away from elimination, standing on the last solid panel with nowhere else to go, Ron stepped forward again with effort. He maintained a fragile two-panel distance from being out of the competition, from falling!
Everyone, including Harry, as well as Luna, Viktor, and Cedric in the middle of the line, kept shifting their gaze back and forth in agonizing suspense—sometimes looking with concern and admiration at the two girls drenched in sweat at the front.
Sometimes the group watched with tense, terrified expressions as the abyss closed in inevitably right behind Ron!
"Harry..." Ron's voice was small sounding defeated.
Twenty suffocating seconds passed. Elimination was now just a hair's breadth away.
Ron was sweating profusely. He called out tremblingly. Ron had accepted reality. He didn't wail or cry to Harry anymore. He just wore an expression of resigned acceptance.
"I suppose falling down won't hurt too much, will it, Harry?" Ron asked with a weak try at joking. "Probably just feel like flying, yeah?"
"Don't lose heart, Ron. We can make it! We will!" Harry breathed rapidly, hyperventilating with stress.
"If the panel behind you shatters, come onto my glass panel and stand with me! We'll share it!"
"Stand together?" Ron was stunned, caught off guard by the suggestion.
He instinctively glanced down at the size of the glass panel beneath his feet. It was barely big enough for one person to stand comfortably.
"That's probably not very easy..." Ron said slowly.
"What difference does it make whether it's sooner or later? I'd rather be eliminated with you!" Harry said decisively.
'I'd rather be eliminated with you.'
Ron's mouth opened slightly in shock. Gazing at Harry's resolute face, seeing the conviction there, he felt like a massive boulder was lodged in his chest, making it hard to breathe. His eyes burned with tears.
CRACK—
The twelve seconds passed in a flash, far too fast. Behind Ron, the last glass panel, under Harry's almost pleading gaze with his face ashen and desperate, still shattered on schedule.
Harry quickly glanced toward the front of the line, hoping for a miracle. Unfortunately, Fleur had once again chosen the wrong glass panel and Hermione was gritting her teeth, veins standing out on her neck, straining with everything she had to pull Fleur back up.
"Come here quickly, Ron! Now!" Harry shouted desperately.
Harry swiftly turned his head and reached out his hand urgently toward Ron, who at this critical life-or-death moment with literally seconds left was inexplicably standing there in a daze, frozen.
Everyone else in line was silently counting down in their heads, numbering out those twelve seconds like a death watch.
Feeling sympathy for Ron was meaningless, they themselves could only last about two minutes longer than Ron anyway before the shattering caught them too.
"Hurry up! What are you spacing out for!" Harry roared with desperation, reaching for Ron's wrist.
He was currently in a standing position, balanced carefully. If he didn't get Ron onto his panel beforehand, secured, then when Ron fell, the sudden pulling force would drag Harry straight down into the abyss with him.
"Oh, no—"
To Harry's astonishment, when his hand reached for Ron's wrist, Ron actually shifted his shoulder, directly avoiding his grasp with a twist.
"This is too dangerous... the two of us, with our build, standing on one glass panel together..." Ron said slowly.
He seemed to have found peace with it all. His expression wasn't so tense anymore, and there was even a smile on his lips that infuriated Harry.
"What are you doing, Ron! Stop it!" Harry was so anxious he was about to step one foot onto Ron's panel.
But Ron directly blocked Harry's landing spot with the sole of his foot, not letting him come over.
"It's enough already, Harry." Ron said simply.
CRACK!
Death's scythe finally fell!
Time slowed down.
Harry's shocked and furious gaze followed Ron's falling body down as the panel beneath his feet disintegrated. He saw Ron's lips slowly moving, forming words. There was a carefree smile on his face.
It wasn't until Ron was completely swallowed by the churning darkness, until he vanished from sight entirely, that Harry heard Ron's final words carried on the void.
"I can't keep dragging you all down, can I?"
In this unbearably long and agonizing instant, Harry had the overwhelming impulse to jump into the dark abyss after Ron, to follow him down.
His body had even leaned more than halfway off the glass panel under the drive of his subconscious instinct, tipping forward. But Cedric's strong hand once again grabbed his collar from behind, pulled him back forcefully, and dragged him forward onto a glass panel that Fleur and Hermione had just secured mere seconds ago!
"Ron!"
CRASH!
Harry slammed his fist down on the glass panel with all his strength, howling like a wounded animal, like an injured beast.
"Calm down, Harry!" Cedric patted Harry's shoulder heavily, gripping hard, speaking gravely with forced steadiness. "We have to keep going."
Hermione knew what had happened behind them but she didn't dare look back. She bit her lip tightly, forcibly holding back the tears swirling in her eyes, blurring her vision.
Both Fleur and Hermione understood with certainty that now, whether the four teams could survive, whether anyone made it out, depended on them.
The two girls used every ounce of their willpower and determination to push forward desperately, frantically. But reality was unbearably cruel.
CRACK!
The sound that had become a nightmare rang out again. The pain of gravity pulling at her arms assaulted Fleur's raw nerves once more.
Tears welling in the corners of her eyes, exhaustion and pain overwhelming her, Fleur watched as a sharp, triangular piece of shattered glass tumbled before her face.
The broken glass fragment reflected two shooting stars streaking past in its spinning surface then the glass merged into the darkness below and was gone.
Two shooting stars. Two meteors.
As if struck by lightning, Fleur stood there frozen with the dazed stupor of someone who had been hit by thunder. Her eyes went wide.
"What are you standing there for? Keep going!" Hermione screamed desperately.
With Ron already eliminated and Harry about to follow in Ron's footsteps in mere seconds, Hermione finally couldn't maintain her composure anymore. She screamed with raw emotion, "Move, Fleur!"
"Shut up, Hermione!" Fleur's response was equally sharp.
She turned and glared furiously at Hermione, her were eyes blazing. "I've had a realization!"
'A realization? What realization?! What was she talking about?!'
Hermione wanted to ask but Fleur had already turned her head back. She was staring transfixed at the starry sky above that looked dreamlike and fantastical at first glance. But upon prolonged viewing, with extended exposure, it felt empty and desolate, oppressively lonely.
The cosmos created by magic above their heads was light-years away, utterly unreachable. Could they possibly jump up to the stars? What was she looking at?
Everyone in the line fixed their gaze on Fleur with desperate intensity, including Harry who looked up through tear-blurred eyes. There was little urgency left in their eyes now—they seemed to have accepted their fate as well.
STEP!
This time, it wasn't the sound of shattering glass, but rather Fleur taking a step completely beyond anyone's expectations!
Without Hermione's grip, without any safety, she had directly stepped one square to the front left!
Hermione's scream of warning had already rushed to the tip of her tongue, ready to burst out. But that glass panel held beneath Fleur's feet. It held!
The panel ultimately made Hermione forcibly swallow her shock and anger, choking on it... while simultaneously, a hope she had longed for but dared not believe in, dared not even imagine, floated up in her heart like a bubble rising!
There was more than one clever person here besides Hermione.
Connecting it to what Fleur had just said about having a "realization," everyone guessed it—Fleur might have discovered something!
STEP!
Without Hermione's protection, Fleur advanced forward another step. This time, she also chose the glass panel to the front left.
She succeeded again!
It held!
"What's going on, Fleur!" Joy erupted in Hermione's heart like a volcano after endless winter.
Hermione immediately followed with a step of her own, covering her mouth with one trembling hand, her voice was choked with tears and hope and exhaustion. "You found the pattern! You found it?!"
Ron was eliminated, was gone... but at least Harry seemed to have hope of being saved.
Fleur didn't speak yet, didn't explain. She concentrated fully on the starry sky above, watching intently. After two more successful choices, pulled the team back from the brink of death, she finally turned to look at everyone with wild eyes.
"It's the shooting stars!" Fleur's voice cracked with emotion.
All along, Fleur had presented herself to the Hogwarts students as aloof and proud, untouchable. Harry had never seen Fleur display such a complex, raw expression in front of others.
It seemed like crying and laughing simultaneously, like anger and helplessness, like excitement and devastation all mixed together...
"The shooting stars in the starry sky—when two meteors streak across together, go left! When one meteor streaks across alone, go right!"
With a disheveled, frantic expression, her hair falling loose from its ponytail, Fleur screamed the discovery to everyone.
"This is the clue that Bryan left for us!"
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