The twenty-fourth of June was the last day of exams for the rest of the fourth-years. I stayed in bed until half past eight, mostly because nobody could stop me.
At breakfast, Hermione had her History of Magic notes propped against the marmalade and was eating toast without looking at it.
Her hair was pinned back with a plain brown clip. There was no sign of the blue one.
"Where's your clip?" I asked.
"In my trunk." She turned a page. "I'm not wearing it in an exam. It wouldn't be fair."
"You learned all of this before you ever put it on."
"Then I'll be fine without it." She drank the rest of her tea, put her notes in her bag, and stood up.
I walked out with her. Behind us, the house tables were already sliding themselves against the walls for the exam, and the rest of the fourth-years were crowding into the Entrance Hall to wait.
"Good luck tonight," Hermione said, and kissed me on the cheek, which made Seamus whistle.
"Good luck this morning."
She smiled and went to stand with the others by the doors.
A minute later, Professor McGonagall found me.
"Potter, the champions are meeting their families in the chamber off the Hall," she said. "There's someone waiting for you."
I was grinning before I'd even pushed the door open.
Sirius was standing by the fireplace in a new set of robes, talking to Amos Diggory, who looked like he hadn't decided yet whether shaking hands with a man the Prophet had called a mass murderer since 1981 was all right now.
Across the room, Fleur's mother was talking to Madame Maxime in rapid French. Krum's parents were standing close together by the window and not saying much to anyone.
"There he is," Sirius said, and left Mr Diggory mid-sentence.
Something small and silver-blonde hit me at waist height before I'd got three steps into the room.
"'Arry!"
Gabrielle Delacour had both arms wrapped round my middle and no intention of letting go.
"I can hold my breath for one minute and forty seconds now," she told me, looking up. "In the bath. Fleur timed it."
"That's very impressive."
"It is not impressive," said Fleur, coming over to peel her sister off me. "It is very worrying, and Maman would like it to stop."
"Maman is not the one who was at the bottom of the lake," said Gabrielle, and went to tell Madame Maxime about it instead.
Sirius came over with his hands in his pockets and looked me up and down, as if he was checking I was all there.
"Sleep all right?"
"Till half past eight."
"Good." He lowered his voice. "Dumbledore told me there's nothing in that maze you can't deal with. He said it the way people tell you it's going to rain."
"He's right."
"I know he is. I'm still going to shout myself hoarse."
"At what? The hedges are twenty feet high. Once I'm inside, none of you are going to see a thing. You'll be cheering at a wall of leaves for an hour."
"Then it'll be the most encouraged hedge in Scotland." He took a folded letter out of his inside pocket and opened it just far enough for me to see the first line.
Dear Mr Black, as a member of Harry Potter's family, you are invited to... It had been folded and unfolded so many times that the creases had gone soft. He put it back in his pocket.
"I'm glad you came," I said.
"I wouldn't have missed it," said Sirius, and squeezed my shoulder.
The stands were full by eight o'clock.
The hedges had swallowed the whole Quidditch pitch.
Lanterns hung along the top of the stands, and the sky over the Forbidden Forest was going deep blue.
Somewhere in the middle of all that green, the Triwizard Cup was sitting on a stand, waiting.
Hermione was at the front of the Gryffindor section between Sirius and Ron. She caught my eye and held up her thumb. I held mine up back.
Bagman pointed his wand at his throat. "Sonorus. Ladies and gentlemen, the third and final task of the Triwizard Tournament is about to begin! In first place, with ninety-seven points, Mr Harry Potter of Hogwarts School!"
The noise from the Gryffindor stand sent a few birds flying out of the forest.
He went through the others. Cedric second, then Krum, then Fleur.
Behind us, Professor Moody stumped past on his way to patrol the outside of the maze, and his magical eye swivelled round to look at me as he went.
"I checked that cup three times, Potter," he growled. "Flitwick checked it twice. If anything happens to you in there that isn't a skrewt, I'll want to know why."
"So will I, Professor."
He grunted and went on his way.
Cedric held out his hand. "Beat me to the cup?"
"That's the deal."
"On my whistle, Harry!" Bagman shouted. "Three... two... one..."
The hedges closed behind me, and the noise from the stands went with them.
It was quiet inside. The path was in deep shadow, and the strip of sky overhead was the only thing I could see that didn't belong to the maze.
"Lumos."
The light from my wand only reached a few feet in either direction.
In Hogwarts Legacy, I'd have just spammed Revelio and watched every chest and enemy in the place light up, with a minimap in the corner to make it easier.
Real Hogwarts didn't come with a minimap. It had the Four-Point Spell, and after the last fortnight I could have cast it in my sleep.
I laid my wand flat on my palm. "Point Me."
It spun once and pointed to my right. North. The centre was north-west.
There was a lot of magic in that maze. I could feel it under everything, the way I could feel the wards on the castle.
Most of it was in the hedges themselves, which were alive in a way normal hedges weren't, and very slightly interested in where I was going.
Some of it was stronger, and it moved. Those were Hagrid's creatures, and several of them were sitting right across the quickest way to the middle. I didn't see any reason to go round.
The first one was waiting at the end of a long straight path, and it was a Blast-Ended Skrewt.
It was ten feet long and filled the path from hedge to hedge. Its armoured shell gleamed, and its sting was curled up over its back.
Hermione's note about Skrewts was folded up in my pocket. It said Shell deflects spells. Aim for the underside.
The Skrewt swung its blunt end round towards me. There was a flash of orange and a bang, and a jet of fire came straight down the path.
"Protego."
The blast hit the shield and broke apart. Sparks went everywhere, and a few of them landed on the hedge and fizzled out against the leaves.
"Stupefy!"
The red light hit the Skrewt full on the shell and bounced off it, straight up into the sky.
The Skrewt reared up on its back legs to come at me, and its pale underside showed.
"Impedimenta!"
That one hit it in the soft part of its belly. The Skrewt stalled halfway up, with its legs waving slowly in the air, as if somebody had turned it down to half speed.
"Stupefy."
The second Stunner went into the same spot. The Skrewt toppled over sideways and lay there, out cold.
I stepped over its tail and kept going.
The thing round the next corner looked like Hermione.
She was standing in the middle of the path in her school robes, with the blue clip in her hair. I stopped. She looked at me politely, and without any interest at all.
"Who are you?" she asked.
I had my wand up already. The real Hermione was in the stands with Sirius.
"Sorry," the boggart-Hermione said, a little more uncertainly. "Do I know you? You look like someone, but you're... you're not him, are you?"
"Riddikulus."
There was a crack. The boggart's hand shot straight up into the air.
It went up on its toes, stretching its arm as high as it would go, and said, "Ooh! Ooh! I know this one!" to the empty path, exactly the way Hermione did in practically every lesson we'd ever had.
I laughed out loud. The boggart burst into silver smoke, and the path was empty.
The laugh helped. It didn't get rid of the cold feeling that you're not him had left in my stomach.
She'd known the old Harry for three years, and me since Halloween. If she ever did notice the difference, I had no idea what I'd say to her, or where I'd even start.
I stood on the empty path until my stomach settled. Then I laid my wand on my palm again and found north.
Somewhere to my left, a girl screamed.
It was Fleur. After a week of duelling her in the Room, I'd have known her voice anywhere, and it had come from the other side of the hedge on my left.
I didn't look for a way round. I pointed my wand at the hedge.
"Reducto!"
The spell blew a hole in the hedge the width of a door, sending leaves and broken twigs spraying across the next path.
The edges were already twitching, trying to grow back together. I went through before they could, and heard the gap knit itself shut behind me.
Two more hedges went the same way. Through the third, I could feel Fleur's magic and the spider's, so I aimed well to the left of them. On the other side was a dead end.
An acromantula had her pinned against the hedge. It was the size of a horse, black and hairy, with two of its front legs wrapped round her and its pincers clicking a foot from her face.
Her wand was lying in the grass where she'd dropped it.
"Stupefy!"
I kept that one small. Fleur was right up against it, and I didn't want to put her through the hedge as well.
The Stunner hit the spider on the side of its head, just hard enough to sting.
It loosened its legs from around her, turned towards me with all eight eyes catching my wandlight at once, and came across the dead end at a run, with nobody between us now.
"Stupefy!"
I put a lot more behind that one. It hit the spider square in the middle with a bang that shook the leaves off the hedges, and lifted it clean off the ground mid-stride.
It flew backwards the whole length of the dead end, legs flailing, and slammed into the far hedge so hard that the branches bent round it.
Then it dropped to the grass on its back, its legs curled up over its body, and it didn't move again.
Across the dead end, Fleur's knees gave way, and she started to slide down the hedge.
"Arresto Momentum."
She slowed in mid-fall, as though the air had thickened under her, and settled onto the grass instead of hitting it.
By the time I got to her, she was trying to stand. She put her weight on her right foot, and it folded under her.
She hissed through her teeth and sat back down hard. Her ankle was already swelling over the top of her shoe.
"Accio wand," I said. Her wand flew out of the grass and into my hand, and I gave it to her. Her face was white, but her voice was steady.
"I cannot win now," she said. "Not like this."
"You've still got one good leg."
"I can count, 'Arry." She lifted her wand straight up. "And I am not going to sit in a hedge and wait for that to wake up."
Red sparks shot up from her wand, high over the top of the hedges, and hung there in the dark.
"Go," she said. "Gabrielle will never forgive you if you lose because of me."
I waited until I could hear the teachers coming through the hedges towards her. Then I went.
The path north ran straight into a wall of golden mist.
It hung across the whole width of the path, thick and glittering. Weather didn't glitter like that.
I could feel the shape of it from ten feet away: something that took hold of whoever walked into it and turned their world over.
I'd read about this one, and I'd always wanted to know what it felt like from the inside. So I stepped into it.
The ground swung up over my head and the sky swung down under my feet. Suddenly I was hanging from the grass, with nothing below me but stars.
My robes fell up round my ears. It was a lot less fun than I'd expected.
"Finite Incantatem."
The mist shivered all the way along the path, went thin, and fell apart into gold dust. The sky went back where it belonged, and so did my robes.
I tugged them straight and kept walking.
Where four paths met, something long and orange was coiled across the middle of the crossroads, and it had three heads.
It was a Runespoor. I'd read about them in Fantastic Beasts after Hermione added them to her list: six feet of orange snake with black stripes, all the way from Burkina Faso, and the reason Hagrid had gone a funny colour at one of the six names on her short one.
The three heads came up off the ground together and looked at me.
"Which way's the middle?" I asked it, in Parseltongue.
All three heads stopped dead.
"Left," said the left head at once. "Definitely left."
The middle head swayed gently and looked up at the stars. "Is there a middle?" it said dreamily. "Is anything really the middle of anything?"
"Don't listen to either of them," hissed the right head, and snapped at the left one, which snapped back. "They're idiots, both of them. I've been stuck with the pair of them for eleven years."
Then all three of them decided they'd had enough of me, and came at me at once.
"Protego!"
The right head hit the shield first, fangs out, and bounced off it. The left head went low, round the side. I stepped back and pointed my wand at the knot of necks in the middle.
"Incarcerous!"
Thick ropes shot out of the end of my wand, looped round all three heads at once and pulled tight, binding them together in a neat orange bundle.
The Runespoor thrashed once and then lay on the path, hissing furiously at itself in three voices, all muffled.
"This is your fault," the right head was saying, as I stepped over it.
I took the left-hand path. The Four-Point Spell said north-west, and for once, the left head had been right.
The sphinx was the last thing between me and the centre.
She had the body of a lion and the head of a woman, and she was lying across the path with her paws folded.
"You are very near your goal," she said, in a deep, husky voice. "The quickest way is past me."
"Let's hear it," I said.
"You must answer my riddle. Answer on your first try, and I let you pass. Answer wrongly, and I attack. Remain silent, and I will let you walk away from me unharmed."
She closed her eyes and recited it slowly.
"I spin, but I am not a wheel. I weave, but I have never touched a loom. I lay my table in the corners of your house, and every guest who comes to dinner stays forever. I wear no armour, yet I walk on eight..."
"Spider," I said.
The sphinx's tail twitched.
"Most people," she said, "at least pretend to think about it."
She stood up, stretched her front legs, and moved aside.
The cup was sitting on a stone stand in a clearing a hundred yards further on, glowing softly in the dark.
I stopped at the edge of the clearing and looked at it properly, with everything I had. There was magic all over it.
Moody's checks were wrapped round it in layer after layer, thorough and deeply suspicious, and under those was Flitwick's, neat and precise. Under that, there was just a cup.
Behind me, I heard someone running.
"Harry!"
Cedric came round the last corner at a sprint, scratched all over and missing a sleeve, and skidded to a stop when he saw where I was.
He took one look at me standing a few yards from the cup and started to laugh.
"How long have you been standing there?"
"About ten seconds."
"Go on, then." He put his hands on his knees, still breathing hard. "I'm not going to beat you to it from here."
I walked across the clearing and picked up the Triwizard Cup.
For a second, nothing happened. Then the ground trembled under my feet, and all round the clearing, the hedges began to lean away from us.
They folded back towards the edges of the pitch, one row after another, until the whole maze had flattened out into long green banks and there was nothing at all between the centre of the pitch and the stands.
The noise from the stands reached us all at once.
Every single person in them was on their feet. They'd spent the whole evening staring at hedges, and now that they could finally see something, they were making up for it.
At the front of the Gryffindor stand, Hermione was jumping up and down with both arms in the air, and Sirius was next to her, yelling something I couldn't hear over everyone else.
Bagman's magnified voice was shouting what might have been my name.
"I think that means you won," said Cedric.
It took a long time to get off the pitch.
Fudge made me hold the cup up again for the photographers, and then handed me a heavy bag of gold that clinked when it moved.
Dumbledore shook my hand with both of his and said, "Well done, Harry," quietly, under all the shouting.
Sirius hugged me hard enough to crack something. Hermione got to me last. She pressed her face into my shoulder and stayed there.
I put the cup and the gold down on the grass so I could hold on to her properly. I'd spent all year being told the cup was the point. It turned out I liked this bit a lot better.
Over her head, I could see Cedric at the edge of the pitch. Amos Diggory had one arm around his neck and was talking to him very fast, and Cedric was letting him, with grass all over his robes and one sleeve gone.
I watched them for a bit. Further along, Fleur was sitting on a bench with her ankle strapped up and Gabrielle on her lap. When she saw me looking, she waved.
Fred and George found me as the crowd started to thin out. They'd come down from the stands at a run.
"Congratulations, oh champion," said Fred.
"Ruler of hedges," said George.
"Here." I bent down for the bag of gold, which was harder with Hermione still holding on, and held it out.
They both looked at it. Neither of them took it.
"That's the prize money," George said slowly.
"A thousand Galleons," I agreed. "I don't need it, and you're going to open a joke shop. Bagman's paying back what he owes you, so this isn't that. Think of it as an investment. I want free stuff for life."
"Harry," said Fred. "We can't..."
"You can. If you don't, I'll give it to Percy."
Fred took the bag. He held it in both hands, as if he was checking it wasn't a dream.
He looked at George. George rubbed the back of his neck and looked at the bag.
"Free stuff for life," George said.
"For life," Fred agreed. His voice had gone slightly odd. "And for Hermione."
Hermione lifted her head off my shoulder at last. Her eyes were red round the edges.
She reached into the inside pocket of my robes, found the little square of folded parchment still in there, and pressed it flat against my chest with her hand.
"You came out the same way you went in," she said.
***
//3500 words
A/N: Thanks for reading!
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