k, and the shape-shifter exploded in a wisp of smoke. The
silver stag faded from sight. Harry wished it could have stayed, he could have used
some company...but he moved on, quickly and quietly as possible, listening hard,
his wand held high once more.
Left ... right... left again . . . Twice he found himself facing dead ends. He did the
Four-Point Spell again and found that he was going too far east. He turned back,
took a right turn, and saw an odd golden mist floating ahead of him.
Harry approached it cautiously, pointing the wand's beam at it. This looked like
some kind of enchantment. He wondered whether he might be able to blast it out
of the way.
"Reducio!" he said.
The spell shot straight through the mist, leaving it intact. He supposed he should
have known better; the Reductor Curse was for solid objects. What would happen
if he walked through the mist? Was it worth chancing it, or should he double
back?
He was still hesitating when a scream shattered the silence.
"Fleur?" Harry yelled.
There was silence. He stared all around him. What had happened to her? Her
scream seemed to have come from somewhere ahead. He took a deep breath and
ran through the enchanted mist.
The world turned upside down. Harry was hanging from the ground, with his hair
on end, his glasses dangling off his nose, threatening to fall into the bottomless
sky. He clutched them to the end of his nose and hung there, terrified. It felt as
though his feet were glued to the grass, which had now become the ceiling. Below
him the dark, star-spangled heavens stretched endlessly. He felt as though if he
tried to move one of his feet, he would fall away from the earth completely.
Think, he told himself, as all the blood rushed to his head, think. . .
But not one of the spells he had practiced had been designed to combat a sudden
reversal of ground and sky. Did he dare move his foot? He could hear the blood
pounding in his ears. He had two choices - try and move, or send up red sparks,
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and get rescued and disqualified from the task.
He shut his eyes, so he wouldn't be able to see the view of endless space below
him, and pulled his right foot as hard as he could away from the grassy ceiling.
Immediately, the world righted itself. Harry fell forward onto his knees onto the
wonderfully solid ground. He felt temporarily limp with shock. He took a deep,
steadying breath, then got up again and hurried forward, looking back over his
shoulder as he ran away from the golden mist, which twinkled innocently at him in
the moonlight.
He paused at a junction of two paths and looked around for some sign of Fleur. He
was sure it had been she who had screamed. What had she met? Was she all right?
There was no sign of red sparks - did that mean she had got herself out of trouble,
or was she in such trouble that she couldn't reach her wand? Harry took the right
fork with a feeling of increasing unease . . . but at the same time, he couldn't help
thinking. One champion down. . .
The cup was somewhere close by, and it sounded as though Fleur was no longer in
the running. He'd got this far, hadn't he? What if he actually managed to win?
Fleetingly, and for the first time since he'd found himself champion, he saw again
that image of himself, raising the Triwizard Cup in front of the rest of the school. .
. .
He met nothing for ten minutes, but kept running into dead ends. Twice he took
the same wrong turning. Finally, he found a new route and started to jog along it,
his wandlight waving, making his shadow flicker and distort on the hedge walls.
Then he rounded another corner and found himself facing a Blast-Ended Skrewt.
Cedric was right - it was enormous. Ten feet long, it looked more like a giant
scorpion than anything. Its long sting was curled over its back. Its thick armor
glinted in the light from Harry's wand, which he pointed at it.
"Stupefy!"
The spell hit the skrewt's armor and rebounded; Harry ducked just in time, but
could smell burning hair; it had singed the top of his head. The skrewt issued a
blast of fire from its end and flew forward toward him.
"Impedimenta!" Harry yelled. The spell hit the skrewt's armor again and
ricocheted off; Harry staggered back a few paces and fell over.
"IMPEDIMENTA!"
The skrewt was inches from him when it froze - he had managed to hit it on its
fleshy, shell-less underside. Panting, Harry pushed himself away from it and ran,
hard, in the opposite direction - the Impediment Curse was not permanent; the
skrewt would be regaining the use of its legs at any moment.
He took a left path and hit a dead end, a right, and hit another; forcing himself to
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stop, heart hammering, he performed the Four-Point Spell again, backtracked, and
chose a path that would take him northwest.
He had been hurrying along the new path for a few minutes, when he heard
something in the path running parallel to his own that made him stop dead.
"What are you doing?" yelled Cedric's voice. "What the hell d'you think you're
doing?"
And then Harry heard Krum's voice.
"Crucio!"
The air was suddenly full of Cedric's yells. Horrified, Harry began sprinting up his
path, trying to find a way into Cedric's. When none appeared, he tried the
Reductor Curse again. It wasn't very effective, but it burned a small hole in the
hedge through which Harry forced his leg, kicking at the thick brambles and
branches until they broke and made an opening; he struggled through it, tearing his
robes, and looking to his right, saw Cedric jerking and twitching on the ground,
Krum standing over him.
Harry pulled himself up and pointed his wand at Krum just as Krum looked up.
Krum turned and began to run.
"Stupefy!" Harry yelled.
The spell hit Krum in the back; he stopped dead in his tracks, fell forward, and lay
motionless, facedown in the grass. Harry-dashed over to Cedric, who had stopped
twitching and was lying there panting, his hands over his face.
"Are you all right?" Harry said roughly, grabbing Cedric's arm.
"Yeah," panted Cedric. "Yeah ... I don't believe it... he crept up behind me. ... I
heard him, I turned around, and he had his wand on me. . . ."
Cedric got up. He was still shaking. He and Harry looked down at Krum.
"I can't believe this ... I thought he was all right," Harry said, staring at Krum.
"So did I," said Cedric.
"Did you hear Fleur scream earlier?" said Harry.
"Yeah," said Cedric. "You don't think Krum got her too?"
"I don't know," said Harry slowly.
"Should we leave him here?" Cedric muttered.
"No," said Harry. "I reckon we should send up red sparks. Someone'll come and
collect him . . . otherwise he'll probably be eaten by a skrewt."
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"He'd deserve it," Cedric muttered, but all the same, he raised his wand and shot a
shower of red sparks into the air, which hovered high above Krum, marking the
spot where he lay.
Harry and Cedric stood there in the darkness for a moment, looking around them.
Then Cedric said, "Well... I s'pose we'd better go on. . . ."
"What?" said Harry. "Oh . . . yeah . . . right. . ."
It was an odd moment. He and Cedric had been briefly united against Krum - now
the fact that they were opponents came back to Harry. The two of them proceeded
up the dark path without speaking, then Harry turned left, and Cedric right.
Cedric's footsteps soon died away.
Harry moved on, continuing to use the Four-Point Spell, making sure he was
moving in the right direction. It was between him and Cedric now. His desire to
reach the cup first was now burning stronger than ever, but he could hardly believe
what he'd just seen Krum do. The use of an Unforgivable Curse on a fellow human
being meant a life term in Azkaban, that was what Moody had told them. Krum
surely couldn't have wanted the Triwizard Cup that badly....Harry sped up.
Every so often he hit more dead ends, but the increasing darkness made him feel
sure he was getting near the heart of the maze. Then, as he strode down a long,
straight path, he saw movement once again, and his beam of wandlight hit an
extraordinary creature, one which he had only seen in picture form, in his Monster
Book of Monsters.
It was a sphinx. It had the body of an over-large lion: great clawed paws and a
long yellowish tail ending in a brown tuft. Its head, however, was that of a woman.
She turned her long, almond-shaped eyes upon Harry as he approached. He raised
his wand, hesitating. She was not crouching as if to spring, but pacing from side to
side of the path, blocking his progress. Then she spoke, in a deep, hoarse voice.
"You are very near your goal. The quickest way is past me."
"So ... so will you move, please?" said Harry, knowing what the answer was going
to be.
"No," she said, continuing to pace. "Not unless you can answer my riddle. Answer
on your first guess - I let you pass. Answer wrongly - I attack. Remain silent - I
will let you walk away from me unscathed."
Harry's stomach slipped several notches. It was Hermione who was good at this
sort of thing, not him. He weighed his chances. If the riddle was too hard, he could
keep silent, get away from the sphinx unharmed, and try and find an alternative
route to the center.
"Okay," he said. "Can I hear the riddle?"
The sphinx sat down upon her hind legs, in the very middle of the path, and
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recited:
"First think of the person who lives in disguise,
Who deals in secrets and tells naught but lies.
Next, tell me what's always the last thing to mend,
The middle of middle and end of the end?
And finally give me the sound often heard
During the search for a hard-to-find word.
Now string them together, and answer me this,
Which creature would you be unwilling to kiss?"
Harry gaped at her.
"Could I have it again . . . more slowly?" he asked tentatively. She blinked at him,
smiled, and repeated the poem. "All the clues add up to a creature I wouldn't want
to kiss?" Harry asked.
She merely smiled her m