The competition was about to begin, and the four champions gathered nervously at the entrance to the maze, standing in a loose line.
Harry couldn't help but feel somewhat nervous, his stomach was doing uncomfortable flips despite his best efforts to appear calm.
He was confident in his abilities, certainly—he'd trained hard, practiced his spells, prepared as thoroughly as possible. But this was a competition concerning Hogwarts' honor, after all, representing his school in front of hundreds of spectators and international guests.
The weight of that responsibility was pressing heavily on his shoulders.
"Harry Potter! Harry Potter! POTTER! POTTER!"
The enthusiastic cheers of the spectators resounded from the nearby stands. Harry turned and waved toward the Hogwarts crowd, spotting Ron and Hermione in the front row jumping up and down, and the entire Weasley family on their feet.
"I believe everyone is already clear on the rules," Ludo Bagman announced enthusiastically from beside the entrance, his voice carrying a tone of forced cheerfulness. "The competition is about to begin. Go prepare yourselves, champions. Get your heads in the game!"
He turned toward the packed spectator stands, drew his wand to his throat, and cast a powerful Sonorus Charm that made his voice boom across the grounds.
"Ladies and gentlemen, wizards and witches, I'm absolutely delighted to stand here once again as your host—the final task of the Triwizard Tournament is about to begin!
The champions will enter the maze in order according to their current accumulated scores. Everyone can watch the four champions' performances in real-time through the magical screen ahead!"
Harry looked curiously in the direction Ludo indicated with a gesture. A large, luminous cloth floated in midair in front of the spectator stands, suspended by nothing visible, displaying his own image in remarkable detail.
He could see himself quite perfectly.
He unconsciously raised his hand to touch his messy hair, trying to flatten it down, and his projected image in the screen made the exact same motion simultaneously.
'What kind of magic is this?' Harry thought with fascination.
He instinctively looked around the maze entrance, trying to find a hidden camera or enchanted mirror or something else that might be capturing his image, scanning the hedge walls and torch posts.
Of course, he found nothing at all. Just solid hedge and flickering torchlight.
While he puzzled over this marvel, Ludo's amplified voice rang out again, making him jump. "Harry Potter, please prepare yourself—you will be the first champion to enter the maze!"
A shrill whistle had appeared in Ludo's mouth at some point.
The sharp whistle suddenly cut through the air. Harry started at the sharp sound, his heart racing, then took a deep breath and strode forward through the dark maze entrance with as much confidence as he could muster.
He took one last look back at the enormous screen before the hedge walls swallowed him, where his image had been enlarged and now occupied the primary position, his face was filling most of the display.
Then the maze closed around him and the crowd's noise became muffled and distant.
The maze was much as Harry had imagined it would be, though somehow more oppressive in reality.
The high-hanging moon above provided some pale, cold light, and dim torches on the hedge walls at intervals provided additional better-than-nothing lighting those casted shadows. The path beneath his feet wasn't very even with tree roots and stones sticking out up unexpectedly but it was quite wide, wide enough for five or six people to walk abreast comfortably.
The hedge walls stretched up twenty feet on both sides, completely blocking any view of what lay ahead.
Harry advanced cautiously forward, his wand raised and ready, alert for enemies or obstacles that might appear at any moment from the shadows.
After walking for just a few minutes, moving slowly and checking each corner carefully, he had already encountered four intersections that branched off in different directions.
Fortunately, magic could help him find the correct general direction toward the center. As long as he had enough time and didn't get seriously injured, reaching his destination was only a matter of persistence and determination.
After turning carefully into a new path that angled left, checking first that nothing was waiting around the corner, Harry raised his wand once more and murmured, "Point Me."
The wand spun in his palm, positioning itself.
Suddenly, without any warning whatsoever, the ground collapsed beneath his feet.
The sensation of weightlessness struck abruptly. Air rushed past his ears as he fell into darkness.
'A trap!' Harry's mind screamed in panic.
Harry's heart jumped into his throat, but long-term training and battle experience made him react instinctively rather than freezing.
His wand hand moved in a arc, and the white light of a Levitation Charm enveloped him immediately, slowing his descent. He pushed off hard against a protruding stone on the rough pit wall with his feet and leapt out of the nearly ten-foot-deep trap quite easily, landing steadily on solid ground in a crouch.
He stayed low for a moment, breathing hard, checking for other threats.
"Too simple," Harry muttered to himself after a moment, glancing back at the dark opening he'd just escaped from with a mixture of relief and disappointment.
Pale moonlight barely illuminated the bottom of the pit when he peered down, there was only scattered dirt and stones inside, nothing else. Even falling all the way in wouldn't have caused much serious harm beyond some bruises.
If it were him designing this obstacle, he'd at least have placed some wooden spikes or a small fire pit at the bottom to make it genuinely dangerous.
This thought made Harry shudder involuntarily. All right, that might be far too dangerous for a school competition. People could actually die.
He shook his head, casting aside such dark thoughts, and continued forward into the maze's depths.
As it turned out, the maze was even larger than Harry had initially thought—probably due to an Undetectable Extension Charm making the interior space far bigger than the exterior extents.
It felt like he'd been walking for an hour, though it had probably only been fifteen minutes.
Harry didn't know what challenges the other champions had encountered in their own sections, but so far, he had only faced that one relatively simple pit trap and a few pathetically small Acromantulas.
Those Acromantulas were so pitifully tiny, barely the size of dinner plates that Harry almost couldn't bear to hurt them. They'd skittered away after he'd stunned one.
'Where did all the big ones go?' he wondered with some confusion.
He'd probably have to ask the Treants about that.
The Treants had thoroughly exterminated most of the Acromantula colony and domesticated the small remaining handful that survived. To make them easier to control and less dangerous, Professor Westeros had even found a way to magically reduce the spiders' natural aggressiveness—now they were almost like ordinary docile livestock, practically harmless.
It must be said, it was quite cruel to their species.
The advantage was that they could now regularly and safely collect valuable Acromantula venom without risking life and limb.
Harry waved his wand, using a quick Aguamenti to wash off the small amount of disgusting spider fluid that had splattered on his robes when he'd stunned one, then continued walking along the maze's outer edge, trying to map it mentally.
After a few more minutes of walking, turning corners and checking paths, the surrounding air gradually became more humid and stuffier, harder to breathe.
A strange, absolutely disgusting smell like a nauseating mixture of burnt rotten eggs and decaying meat faintly wafted over on the slight breeze, growing increasingly strong with each step forward.
Harry's nose wrinkled in disgust. He felt he'd definitely smelled this particular odor somewhere before, but where?
Suddenly, a series of sharp crackling explosions came from somewhere around the corner ahead. Harry suddenly had a guess about what awaited him.
'Could it be...?'
He cautiously peered around the corner, pressing himself flat against the hedge.
The path ahead was completely occupied by a group of large, slimy creatures that made his heart sink.
Blast-Ended Skrewts!
Harry had seen these absolutely chaotic and unpredictable creatures at Hagrid's hut before, but these were much, much larger than the ones he'd encountered with him—some were nearly ten feet long, their scorpion-like tails raised aggressively.
The massive Skrewts caught Harry's scent on the air and immediately arched their grotesque bodies, thick steam rising from their dangerous tails in preparation—a clear prelude to attack.
However, just as Harry raised his wand defensively, his mind racing through possible spells, preparing to withstand the Skrewts' inevitable charge—
"Bang! Bang! Bang!"
A series of heavy, earth-shaking thuds came from somewhere behind the Skrewts, making the ground tremble slightly beneath Harry's feet.
Harry's gaze went beyond the distracted Skrewts, trying to see what was coming.
It was a Treant! A massive one!
The Treant was extremely tall and its rough, dark bark were looking absolutely ferocious in the dim, flickering light of the torches. Its branch-arms were thick as tree trunks.
Its speed completely shattered Harry's previous perception of those slow-moving, gentle Treants he'd met before in the forest.
This one was fast. Terrifyingly fast.
Almost instantly, in the time it took Harry to blink time or two, the Treant had already reached the several confused Skrewts, which were now turning to face this new threat.
Its massive arm swung out aggressively in a wide arc.
"Splat!"
A Skrewt that had been shooting flames aggressively at Harry was flattened instantly like a beetle hit by a giant swatter, crushed completely flat. Its slimy innards and shell fragments splattered everywhere across the path in a disgusting spray, and the stench was absolutely overwhelming.
Harry gagged, covering his nose.
The Treant's movements didn't pause for even a second. It swung its other hand in a powerful backhand strike that whistled through the air.
"Boom!"
In an instant, the remaining three or four Skrewts were sent flying like kicked balls, disappearing from Harry's view in moments.
Harry figured they'd probably been launched straight out of the maze, possibly landing somewhere near the Forbidden Forest.
After efficiently dealing with the Skrewts, the Treant slowly turned its wooden head.
Harry recognized its distinctive features and knotted bark immediately.
It was Wika!
One of the smaller Treants!
He'd seen it at the Forbidden Forest before, and it had seemed friendly enough then.
Seeing it was an acquaintance... well, a familiar tree at least, Harry relaxed slightly, lowering his wand a fraction.
However, he'd clearly relaxed far too soon. That was a mistake.
"You... you... you..."
Wika's mouth—a knot in its trunk opened and closed repeatedly for a long time, still only able to say that single word in a creaking voice. It had only learned that one word of human speech so far.
Harry paused, trying to display a friendly expression and raising one hand in greeting. "Hello, Wika? Thank you for dealing with those Skrewts. I appreciate the—"
His words hadn't yet fallen when Wika's massive arm, without any warning whatsoever and with a terrifying sound of tearing air that made Harry's hair blow back, suddenly swept horizontally toward Harry's position in a devastating arc!
"!" Harry's eyes widened in shock.
He threw himself backward in a desperate roll, feeling the displaced air from the blow, narrowly dodging the attack by inches.
The Treant didn't know anything about restraint or holding back. The large amount of dust and debris kicked up in the air by the force of the missed blow made Harry cough and realize he'd nearly ended up exactly like those flattened Skrewts—a smear on the ground.
Now he understood: the Treants weren't his helpers in this maze, but one of the challenges, one of the obstacles placed here deliberately to stop him.
As for why the Treant had immediately attacked the Skrewts instead of him, that was probably just a personal grudge between species.
Harry had absolutely no intention of tangling with Wika in close combat and immediately turned to run as fast as his legs could carry him with his heart pounding.
The maze's high hedge walls flashed past on both sides in a blur. At a crossroads, he turned right without any hesitation, hoping desperately that the narrow passage would somewhat impede Wika's pace and give him an advantage.
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