At the top of the finishing platform, bathed in the warm glow of the torch-light, everyone turned to face Fleur with warm, genuine smiles. They had all agreed unanimously to Harry's proposal.
Faced with those warm, welcoming expressions, Fleur looked utterly blindsided. The composed, self-assured Beauxbatons champion who had walked into this tournament exuding confidence now appeared genuinely lost for words.
True, she was the one who had discovered the pattern in the shooting stars and saved everyone from certain elimination. That was undeniable. But she had never dared to hope that the others would simply hand over a key that was clearly of tremendous importance, perhaps even the most critical item in the entire tournament.
"You're all really willing to…" She hesitated, voice quieter than usual, as though she still couldn't quite believe it. Her blue eyes moved from face to face, searching for hesitation but found none.
"Oh, just take it." Harry shrugged, his tone was breezy and unbothered, as though giving away a possible tournament victory was the most natural thing in the world.
"Like Viktor said, we'll fight with everything we've got in the next challenge."
He paused, then added with a small smirk, "Take it fast, before we change our minds."
"Oh—" The corner of Fleur's mouth curved up into a genuine, radiant smile, a glint of light was flashing in her blue eyes. "You're all too kind! All of you."
She turned to face the torch-shaped radiance. She drew a slow, steady breath, composing herself. Then she rose onto her tiptoes and reached her hand into the white glow, drawing out an ancient bronze key that rested within the flame.
The others crowded around at once, jostling slightly, peering curiously at the shabby key lying flat in Fleur's open palm. It looked ancient, the kind of thing found in forgotten drawers.
"What does it do?" Cedric asked, puzzled, tilting his head.
"No idea," Hermione answered plainly, turning it over with her eyes. "Open a door, perhaps, or something else entirely. I suppose we won't know until the very end."
Fleur tucked the key happily into her pocket, and before she even had the chance to properly thank everyone for their generosity, an old stone door appeared on the platform. The same archaic kind they had already passed through twice before.
"This feels like a video game dungeon," Harry muttered under his breath, exhaling slowly, his spirit was worn thin with exhaustion. "Next level. Always another level."
Not that complaining changed anything. Quitting was simply out of the question. They hadn't come this far only to stop now.
The group took a brief moment to gather themselves then pressed forward into the next challenge with determination.
Darkness fell instantly as they crossed the threshold, as expected.
Harry's eyes had barely begun to adjust to the dim when a blast of searing white light punched straight through them without warning. Tears streamed down his face as his pupils contracted violently against the sudden assault.
Whoosh.
The dizzying lurch of the sudden environmental shift hadn't even fully left his mind, his balance was still reorienting, before a cold so profound, it seemed to freeze his very soul tore a sharp cry of pain from his lips.
"Bloody hell—what is this place?!" Harry roared in genuine misery, his voice was muffled and distorted by the howling wind.
"Did Professor Watson teleport us to the Arctic?!"
It was meant as a dark joke. But looking around with streaming eyes, the champions truly were buried deep in a world of ice and snow.
Everything around them was a stark, punishing white that hurt to look at directly. The ground, the sky, the horizon, all were merged into a single blinding canvas.
Arctic winds sliced like blades of cold, cutting straight through clothing and skin to the bone beneath, sweeping curtains of snow into spiraling, dizzying flurries. The howling wail of the wind filled the air like the shriek of a banshee.
Hermione snatched back the jacket Harry had been holding for her and shrugged it on with trembling hands. But the thin competition cloth was no match for conditions this brutal, and offered neither of them nearly enough warmth.
Harry and Hermione pressed themselves together instinctively, clinging close for body heat, their faces turned away from the wind.
"Do something, Hermione!" Harry cried, the cold was so savage and overwhelming he could barely string a clear thought together. His lips were already going numb.
"I'm trying, Harry!" she answered, her voice was already shaking with the effort of speaking through chattering teeth.
In less than half a minute, a layer of frost had formed on both of them like a coat of white fur. Ice crystals gathered in Harry's eyebrows and lashes, on the shoulders and collars of their jackets. They looked like statues left out in a blizzard.
Hermione wrenched her wand from her sleeve with stiff, clumsy fingers before she finally coaxed a small flame from its tip.
But the warmth it offered vanished instantly, snatched away by the merciless, howling wind before it could travel more than an inch. The flame guttered and nearly died with each gust.
"That's not working!" Hermione snapped in frustration. She extinguished the flame and instead tapped both herself and Harry briskly with her wand, casting a warming charm directly onto their skin and clothes.
A wave of warmth flowed through Harry's body like stepping into a hot bath, reaching even into his frozen thoughts, thawing his sluggish mind back to alertness. But before either of them could exhale in relief, before the warmth could properly settle and spread, the persistent cold swept it all away again.
The charm dissipated into nothing against the sheer magnitude of the environment.
"Do it again, Hermione!" Harry shouted over the roaring wind.
She cast the warming charm again, and while their bodies enjoyed that brief, fragile reprieve, Harry drew his own wand with still-clumsy fingers and conjured an orange-red flame from its tip.
This one burned stronger than Hermione's pushing back against the wind with some success. Just enough to take the edge off the most savage gusts though only, only for moments.
"What do we do now, Hermione?!" Harry roared over the roaring wind, holding his flame up in the air like a torch.
He could feel it gnawing at what little magical energy he had left, burning reserves he couldn't afford to spend. "We can't keep this up!"
"There has to be a way through," Hermione said through gritted teeth. Her voice was strained but her mind was working, eyes were scanning. "Professor Watson always provides a way."
Hermione's face had taken on an ashen, haggard cast, lips nearly blue. She narrowed her watering eyes against the bitter wind and forced herself to scan their surroundings steadily, ignoring the cold as best she could.
Through the swirling white haze, she could just make out a few struggling figures. One person had tripped over something partially buried in the snow and gone sprawling face-first into a drift.
Beyond them, through the curtains of blowing snow, several dark shapes jutted up from the white expanse like broken teeth.
Roughly a hundred feet away stood something tall and irregularly shaped, dark against the blinding white landscape. A large mass, unlike anything naturally occurring.
And surrounding it, four… door frames? She squinted hard.
"I—I think—" Hermione hugged herself tight, voice high and thin as she pointed, "That's where we need to go—"
"The red stones on the ground!" Viktor Krum's voice cut through her words, amplified by some quick magic, carrying powerfully across the storm from where he'd fallen in the snow. "Smash them! They'll warm you up!"
Harry and Hermione exchanged a rapid glance.
Harry immediately aimed his flame-tipped wand at the snow packed around his knees and melted it with a focused burst of heat.
The fire burned away the layers of white in a steaming rush, exposing black earth beneath. Scattered across the exposed dark soil were clusters of glowing red stones, each one approximately the size of a large Bludger. They were unmistakably fragile-looking, almost translucent.
The barest flicker of Harry's flame grazed the surface of the nearest one, and it shattered instantly with a glassy crack. A few wisps of deep red-glowing smoke rose from the shards and swirled swiftly around him, seeking warmth to give.
"Oh, yes!" The exclamation burst from Harry instinctively.
It was like sinking into a hot spring after hours in cold water. The sudden rush of warmth made Harry's eyes flutter shut for one second of pure bliss. Every frozen muscle relaxed at once.
"Wh-what's happening, H-Harry?" Hermione's teeth were still chattering so badly she could barely form words. She stared at the drifting crimson haze encircling him like a slow, lazy smoke ring, unable to feel it from where she stood.
Harry opened his eyes, mind clear for the first time since arriving in this frozen place. He looked at the glowing red mist wrapped around himself like a second coat then at Hermione nearly frozen stiff beside him and he understood.
"Viktor was right, smash a stone, Hermione, quickly! The smoke keeps the cold out entirely!"
Hermione aimed at another red stone with uncertain hope. A flash of silver light and then the crimson smoke enveloped her too, curling around her like a living thing offering comfort.
"Oh!" She reached out and pressed her bare hand into the falling snow around her feet, and felt absolutely nothing.
"This is extraordinary," she breathed, straightening up, color rushing back into her cheeks. She turned her wand over in her fingers with wonder. "I've never read about any spell or magical substance that could do something precisely like this!"
Harry had long since given up being astonished by strange things. He let out a long, warm breath of sigh.
"Merlin's beard…" He shook his head in relief. "For Viktor's sake, I'll forgive Karkaroff. I might even write him a thank-you note."
Hermione shot him a sidelong look of incredulous amusement, then turned her attention back to the dark shape looming ahead through the thinning storm.
With the killing cold no longer a threat, the blizzard had transformed around them into something almost beautiful. The same howling winds, the same swirling snow but now seen from safety, it had a wild, terrible majesty to it.
Snow crystals caught what light there was and scattered it into brief prismatic sparks.
Harry scooped up a handful of snow with his bare hand and tossed it lightly between his palms, savoring the strange, delightful absurdity of touching ice and feeling absolutely nothing at all.
"Come on, let's go see what that is."
Hermione, ever more focused on solving the challenge than playing in the snow, tugged Harry firmly by the arm before his wonder could turn into delay.
The two of them trudged through the deep drifts toward the towering shadow, their feet were sinking with each step, while the other teams, having recovered from their own initial shock and disbelief with the help of the red stones were converging on the same dark shape from every direction.
The shapes surrounding the central shadow were, indeed, stone doorways.
Each rough-carved frame contained a mysterious, translucent vortex within its arch—the kind that would clearly transport whoever stepped through it somewhere else.
Four doors. One for each team, it seemed.
"Let's go," Hermione said quietly. She pulled at Harry's arm again, her eyes were on the doors.
Whatever lay inside, they clearly weren't going to escape it. But first, they had to understand what the dark central shape actually was.
By the time Harry and Hermione had trudged through the last of the drifts and reached the base of the central shadow, the other teams had arrived around it from all sides.
"Thank you, Viktor," Cedric said, nodding toward him. "We were nearly frozen solid out there. If you hadn't called out when you did, we'd have been done for."
"Don't mention it," Viktor shifted his stern, brooding brows, his voice was a low rumble. "I only tripped over one of those red stones by accident. I didn't do anything clever."
Harry stepped forward and brushed the snow from the surface of the massive object. His brow furrowed slightly.
"A block of ice…" he said slowly. "What does it mean? Do we need to break it to get what's inside?"
Hermione raised her wand without hesitation and summoned a flame, guiding it over the ice-blue surface, melting away the thick snow coating that had accumulated on it.
'Oh.'
When the block stood fully revealed before them, a ripple of quiet excitement crossed every face.
The second key.
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