The whistle shrieked.
The hedges groaned as if waking from a long, resentful sleep, walls of living green shifting and sealing the paths behind the champions. The crowd's roar faded almost instantly, swallowed by magic and distance.
Harry stepped forward first.
Cedric fell into stride beside him without a word, both of them moving at a run as soon as the maze allowed it. The air inside was thick, charged, humming faintly against Harry's skin in a way that made his instincts prickle.
"Stick together as long as we can," Cedric said quietly.
Harry nodded. "Right."
They took the first turn together.
Ten seconds later, the maze made the choice for them.
The ground lurched, hedges snapping shut between paths like jaws. Cedric skidded to a halt on the wrong side of a sudden split, eyes wide.
"Harry!"
"I'll find you again!" Harry shouted back.
Then the greenery slammed shut, sound deadened, and Cedric was gone.
Harry did not hesitate.
He shifted.
Bones lengthened smoothly, skin darkening to deep cerulean as height surged upward in a rush of power that felt like slipping into a second heartbeat. In the space of a breath, Harry stood as his Na'vi form, taller than the hedges themselves, muscles coiled, senses flaring wide.
He vaulted.
The maze blurred beneath him as he landed atop the living walls, bare feet barely bending the magically reinforced foliage. He ran over the maze, leaping intersections, reading the subtle shifts of magic beneath the greenery like currents in water.
Faster.
Deeper.
Then
He froze.
The air ahead twisted.
Harry dropped back into the maze corridor just as something stepped out of the shadows.
A body.
Still.
Blue skin gone pale and wrong, eyes glassy, chest unmoving.
Neteyam.
Harry's breath left him in a broken sound.
"No," he whispered.
The boggart wore grief perfectly, his brother's face slack with death, the echo of loss pressing down so hard Harry's knees nearly buckled.
Then, clarity.
He straightened.
"That's not how his story ends," Harry said, voice steady despite the pain.
He lifted a hand.
"Riddikulus."
The image shifted.
Neteyam was alive, laughing, arms thrown around Jake and Neytiri as they reunited, whole and radiant beneath Eywa's light. The grief shattered like glass, the boggart collapsing into nothing.
Harry exhaled once.
Then he moved.
The maze fought him.
Harry swatted Viktor Krum bodily into the hedges when the Bulgarian champion charged him under the Imperius Curse, magic flaring as Harry twisted the earth just enough to catch him and hold him safely pinned.
"Sorry," Harry muttered, already moving on.
He found Fleur trapped by vines that drank magic like wine, slicing through them with a controlled blade of air and steadying her long enough to send her on her way.
Cedric reappeared near the centre, shaken but determined.
"You alright?" Cedric asked.
Harry nodded. "Let's finish this."
They separated again only minutes later.
The sphinx rose from the shadows with a rumble, golden eyes gleaming.
Its riddle was sharp, but Harry answered without pause, logic snapping into place like a puzzle he'd already solved. The creature stepped aside, tail flicking in reluctant respect.
The final straight opened before him.
The Triwizard Cup gleamed at the centre, light pulsing.
Cedric burst from the opposite hedge at the same moment.
They locked eyes.
Together.
They ran.
The Acromantula dropped from above.
"DUCK!" Harry shouted.
Cedric rolled just as Harry thrust both hands forward.
Fire answered.
Not wandfire.
Not spellfire.
A roaring, focused burst that incinerated the spider mid-air, ash scattering harmlessly across the grass.
They reached the cup together.
Hands closed around it.
The world twisted.
Cold.
Stone.
Graves.
Harry knew it instantly.
"Cedric," he said urgently, "this is a portkey, this is wrong"
A shape stepped from behind a headstone.
"Kill the spare."
The Killing Curse flew.
Harry reacted without thinking.
The ground rose.
A wall of earth exploded upward, the green light smashing into it and detonating the dirt into blinding dust.
"Take the cup!" Harry shouted, already moving. "Warn Dumbledore, NOW!"
"I'm not leaving you!" Cedric yelled.
Harry clenched his fist.
The air answered.
The cup tore from Harry's grasp, slamming into Cedric's chest. Cedric caught it by reflex
And vanished.
Relief barely had time to register.
A red flash hit Harry square in the chest.
His vision went white.
The last thing he felt was his body collapsing, Na'vi form dissolving as darkness claimed him.
And then...Nothing.