It was a curse! A necrotic curse spreading through his body!
Harry felt a wave of despair wash over him like ice water, trying to drag him under.
He had completely lost all sensation in his right arm below the shoulder. No matter how hard he tried, no matter how much he desperately willed it to move, the limb simply hung heavily at his side like dead weight, as if it no longer belonged to him—as if it had been replaced with a piece of cold, lifeless wood attached to his shoulder.
He couldn't move even a single finger.
His wand slipped from between his fingers and clattered to the ground.
What was even more terrifying, more deeply horrifying than the numbness, was that he could feel his life force draining away steadily, bit by bit.
"Harry!" Krum shouted in alarm, his voice cracking.
Krum's eyes nearly split with rage and fear at the sight of himstaggering, clutching his blackened arm. He tried desperately to rush over to help, to protect him, but another male Death Eater kept him firmly pinned down with a barrage of spells, curse after curse forcing him back step by step.
Red light streaked past his head. Green light forced him to dive. Purple streaks exploded at his feet.
"Stay back, Bulgarian!" The Death Eater snarled.
Worse still, making the situation even more desperate, the male wizard simultaneously used a brutal, roaring flame spell to hold back the approaching Devil's Snare, preventing it from getting close enough to interfere with their capture, creating a wall of orange f.
The plant retreated from the flames.
"Don't kill him, Bella," the male Death Eater hissed a sharp, urgent reminder while continuing to suppress Krum with one hand. "We need him alive, alive!!"
The female Death Eater called "Bella" grinned even more maniacally at these words, her face was contorting into something barely human. She licked her cracked, bleeding lips slowly, as her eyes were glinting with pure bloodlust and sadistic pleasure.
"Alive? Half-dead is still alive... as long as he has one breath left to offer the Master! One single breath is enough! Wouldn't it be so much better to let him suffer more first? Let him scream for mercy?" Her voice rose with excitement. "I want to hear him beg!"
Her voice was eager, hungry, almost sensual.
'What a complete lunatic!' Harry thought with horror, his stomach churning.
Listening to their unrestrained conversation, their casual discussion of his torture as if he weren't even there, Harry's heart sank to the absolute depths of despair.
They intended to torture him!
Stay calm! Stay calm!
Think! There has to be a way out!
At a desperate time like this, what would Professor Westeros do? What would he advise?
Think. Use what you have.
Excruciating pain and icy despair intertwined like tangled thorns wrapped around his chest. Harry watched the pitch-black curse creeping steadily upward toward his shoulder, feeling his life force rapidly ebbing away like sand through his fingers.
He knew that if he hesitated any longer, if he waited even another few seconds to act, it would be completely over.
His face suddenly showed a look of ferocious determination.
Using his last shred of strength and willpower, Harry swung his left hand sharply—not toward the enemy as they expected, not to attack, but toward his own right arm, that was now completely black and devoid of all feeling!
An invisible blade of pure magic flashed in the air like lightning.
Wandless magic!
Something he'd only recently learned with Adrian's help!
A Severing Charm cast without a wand, powered by desperation!
The spell cut clean through.
There was no spray of blood—the curse seemed to have already congealed and corrupted the blood at the wound, turning it black and thick like tar.
The next moment, his entire forearm from the elbow down fell heavily to the ground with a dull, meaty thud.
It lay there, still black, separate from him.
"AAAHHHHH—!"
Unimaginable, agony finally broke through the curse's numbing effect, sweeping through every nerve in Harry's body like a tsunami of pure pain, forcing from him a heart-wrenching scream that echoed across the clearing and probably beyond.
He'd never felt anything like this in his entire life. Never imagined pain could be this intense, this overwhelming.
His vision went white, then red.
No one had anticipated such a resolute, savage action from a fifteen-year-old boy facing death.
The twisted smile on Bella's face froze for an instant, as genuine surprise flickered across her thin facial features, as if she hadn't expected Harry to have such brutal determination, such willingness to mutilate himself to survive.
The male Death Eater's spell also paused momentarily in shock, his concentration was completely broken by the unexpected sight.
"Stupefy!"
Krum seized this fleeting opportunity without hesitation, not wasting a single second, hurling a powerful Stunning Spell at the male Death Eater and forcing him to dodge desperately to the side, finally winning himself a precious moment's relief from the continuous attack of spells.
Harry knelt on the hard ground, gasping for breath, while each gasp felt like knives in his chest. Sweat instantly soaked through his robes, making them cling to his body. His vision blurred and swam, spots were dancing, and the agony nearly consumed his consciousness, dragging him toward a welcoming darkness.
Blood was starting to flow now from the stump.
But he could feel it through the overwhelming pain—the cold, life-draining terrible spread... had stopped.
The curse wasn't proceeding anymore. He'd cut it off in time, severed the infected limb.
He had paid the terrible price of an arm to halt the curse's progression and save his life.
But at the same time, he had completely lost the ability to wield a wand properly, his combat effectiveness was reduced nearly to absolute zero in a fight between wizards.
He was defenseless now.
"Utterly useless boy!" Bella shrieked with delight, recovering from her surprise.
She let out a piercing screech that annoyed on the ears, her sunken eyes were filled with twisted, malicious delight. "You think that will save you, Foolish child! Your futile struggle will only make your death more painful when it finally comes! More entertaining for me to watch! I'll make it last hours!"
She completely ignored her fellow Death Eater who was still locked in combat with Krum, and advanced step by step toward Harry, savoring her prey's despair, drawing it out like fine wine.
"Let me think, let me think..." She pondered aloud sadistically, tapping her wand against her chin. "Do you know the Cruciatus Curse, little Potter? Oh, that's my absolute favorite spell—I've used it so many times on so many people I've lost count—Longbottoms lasted so long under it—"
The agony radiating from his severed arm made it nearly impossible for Harry to think clearly or focus. Bella's voice seemed to come from very far away, carrying a strange, distorted echo as if underwater.
But he knew through the fog of pain he still had one trump card left unused, one last desperate option Adrian had given him.
This was something Professor Westeros had specifically made him bring before the competition started.
Harry used the last of his willpower to reach his trembling left hand into his robe pocket.
The next second, he threw with all his remaining might, hurling something green and round into the air above Bella's head.
Bella hadn't expected the wounded young man before her to still be capable of reacting in such a desperate situation, to still be fighting back. For a moment, she forgot to move and instinctively looked up, tracking the object's arc.
All she saw was a vision of green filling her vision.
And then...
Then there was no then for her. No time to react.
That's right—what Harry had thrown with his last strength was Guru.
"Protego—" Bella started to shout instinctively, raising her wand.
Bella's Shield Charm incantation was only halfway through, when the giant Bouncing Cabbage came crashing down on her from above, slamming her into a close and violent encounter with the hard ground.
WHAM!
As Guru possessed the special "Enlargement" characteristics, it could also alter its weight to a certain extent.
At this moment, Bella was essentially being crushed by several Hagrids jumping on her simultaneously with their full combined weight!
No matter how powerful a witch might be, no matter how many dark spells they knew or how much experience they had, their physical body still belonged to the field of human limitations and vulnerabilities.
Bella's fate was self-evident.
"What? What is—" the male Death Eater gasped in shock, momentarily distracted.
He never could have imagined his experienced companion would lose her combat effectiveness in such an absurd manner, defeated by a vegetable of all things.
This couldn't even be called a proper battle or duel.
It was humiliating.
After completing its suppression of Bella with enthusiasm, Guru seemed to feel that the cushion beneath it wasn't quite comfortable enough yet, that something was still lumpy.
It shifted and ground down several more times.
When it finally moved its body aside with satisfaction, the Bella underneath had completely stopped moving.
Looking at Bella stuck to the dirt ground like a flattened carpet, Harry felt the string that had been stretched to its absolute limit in his heart finally relax slightly.
With Guru and the Devil's Snare helping, plus Krum, dealing with the remaining single male Death Eater shouldn't be much of a problem.
As for himself, he had probably completely lost all usefulness in this fight. He could barely stay conscious.
The agony he'd been forcing himself to endure through sheer willpower alone, along with the exhaustion from mental depletion and blood loss, instantly engulfed him like a bursting dam.
Darkness crept steadily at the edges of his vision, narrowing his view.
Just then, at the worst possible moment imaginable.
At the entrance to the clearing, more shadowy, sinister figures quietly emerged from the thick fog—one, two, three... a full five wizards wearing the same tattered black robes as the first attackers!
Reinforcements. More Death Eaters. How many were there?
Seeing this scene of utter despair, Harry, who had been about to pass out from blood loss and pain, bit down hard on his tongue tip, tasting blood, forcing himself to stay conscious through the fresh sharp pain.
Krum also saw this hopeless scene, and his face turned ashen, all color was draining away from his face.
He valiantly raised his wand anyway with shaking hands—this would be his last desperate struggle, but he'd go down fighting like his ancestors.
But while he was distracted by the new arrivals, looking at the five figures, the dark wizard who had been locked in combat with him for so long seized the opportunity instantly, the tip of his wand pointed at Krum's exposed chest lighting up with sickly green light.
"Avada—" he began.
At this critical moment—
"Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!"
Several sharp sounds of objects cutting through air rang out from multiple directions simultaneously.
Multiple slender, sharp, long objects gleaming with cold metallic light pierced through the maze walls like spears, shooting out with lightning speed from the hedges themselves!
"Thud! Thud! Thud!"
The dull sounds of sharp instruments penetrating flesh rang out in rapid succession!
The dark wizard's body went rigid, freezing mid-spell completely. The Killing Curse about to leave his lips was caught in his throat.
He looked down in disbelief to see his chest and abdomen had been completely pierced through by three or four sharp branches glowing with eerie purple light!
Not much blood flowed from the wounds initially. Instead, the flesh around the punctures rapidly took on an ominous black-purple color—a manifestation not unlike the curse Harry had suffered, spreading like poison through his body.
However, he was not as fortunate as Harry had been with his quick thinking.
All the vital areas had been pierced simultaneously.
He opened his mouth but could only produce a wheezing, gasping, wet sound as blood filled his throat.
After just two seconds, he toppled heavily backward like a felled tree, twitched twice violently, and fell silent.
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