Chapter 84: Tri-wizard maze
Outside of the maze, the students were discussing among themselves about who might win the Tri-wizard Tournament. Although most of their bets are on Neal, still, others were also hoping their support would win.
Harry has strong support from Hogwarts, especially from Gryffindors and few Hufflepuffs while Krum and Fleur have their own support from their admirers. The judges, who sat together were also anticipating the moment when one emerges with the Triwizard Cup.
As Percy was talking with Bagman, about how the investigation was going on with the death of Barty Crouch, meanwhile, Dumbledore frowned as he saw Mad eye Moody missing from his sight, all of a sudden. But he didn't give much attention to it as he was sure that Moody would have been patrolling around to keep an eye in the maze so that, champions in the maze would stay alive.
Meanwhile, in the maze,
Harry 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.
"Reducto!" he said.
The spell shot straight through the mist, leaving it intact. He muttered, "I should have known better; the Reductor Curse was for solid objects. What would happen if I walked through the mist? Was it worth chancing it, or should I double back?"
While Harry was hesitating, Neal, who was in his Animagus form thought, "the mist is strange indeed." Just then, Neal and Harry heard Fleur's scream and saw red sparks in the sky.
When Neal heard her scream that was coming ahead of them, he frowned, "so, Harry chose the safest but either wrong or a long route, huh. Sigh... I can't do anything about it."
Meanwhile, Harry took a deep breath and ran through the enchanted mist. Neal followed him from behind as usual.
Suddenly, Neal found himself hanging upside down, or rather the world itself has turned upside down. Neal felt like he was hanging on a ceiling and felt that if there wasn't any gravity that was binding him to the land, Neal was sure that he would fell in this bottomless sky.
Then, suddenly, something clicked in his mind, "wait a second. Gravity. How did I forget such a thing? First of all, I'm in a snake form. I don't have the ability to stick to the walls or ceilings like lizards.
And no human can change the world upside down. All he can do is to change our perception of it. The thing that proves is that I can't feel the weight of my body on my head because in this case, the weight is upwards, not downwards. As for why it's because gravity is upwards. The reason, I'm not drifting into space is because of gravity. So, that means, it actually doesn't matter at all. What a petty trick. I wonder if Harry figured it out."
As soon as Neal moved, immediately, the world became normal for him and he staring at Harry, who was standing on the grassy fields like a statue.
After waiting for 5 minutes, Harry finally 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.
Meanwhile, at Riddle's house in the village of Little Hangleton, Wormtail heard a high pitched voice asking, "today is the day. Where is my faithful servant? Is he still not here, yet?" Wormtail replied while quivering, "my lord, no word from him yet."
"Doesn't matter. Unlike you, he didn't betray me for once nor he wouldn't betray me in the future. Anyway, I waited for this day for 13 long years. A couple of hours wouldn't hurt."
Back to the maze in the Hogwarts, Harry gulped as he found himself before a 10-feet long Blast-Ended Skrewt. He mumbled, "compared to the Horntail, this was a just a chick but I'm not allowed to summon the broom and fly. What should I do?"
Then, pointing his wand towards this magical creature, he yelled, "Impedimenta." The spell hit the skrewt's armor and ricocheted off; Harry staggered back a few paces and fell over. "IMPEDIMENTA!"
As he shouted again while hitting it at a close range just when it neared him, it hit its fleshy part and it slowed down but just when it regained its momentum and Harry immediately ran away as hard as he can. Meanwhile, as the Skrewt regained its momentum, it tried to follow Harry but suddenly, it felt that it was wrapped by something and it was raised in the air before getting thrown a dozen meters away and got crashed into one of the devil snares, which began to strangle it while Neal continued to follow Harry.
A while later, Harry found himself before an Acromantula but to his surprise, it immediately fled upon seeing him as Neal became visible for a moment to scare it. Meanwhile, Krum was actively searching for Neal to finish him off from the race at the last minute under the Imperius curse placed on him long ago by Moody. But who could have expected; the Acromantula that fled because of Neal's Animagus form encountered him in the middle, which forced Krum to use the killing curse on it before proceeding his way.
At the same time, Harry, who successively escaped, began to steadily progress without any traps, found the darkness was increasing, which made him smile as it's the indication that the center of the maze is near.
Soon, as he turned right, he saw a straight path that was leading to the center of the maze while the place was shimmering in the light and saw the Triwizard cup from away.
Looking at it, a wide smile appeared on his face as Harry began to imagine, him raising the cup in one hand while grabbing the waist of his girlfriend, Cho, with the other hand and kissing her. But soon within a few seconds, he returned to reality as the darkness loomed over and suddenly, finding an animal, which has a body of a lion, huge head that resembles human and a tail of a scorpion, jumped before him from god knows where and obstructing his path.
As Neal frowned, "is that Moody sick? Who the hell puts a manticore as the final guardian. Don't he know how dangerous it is? Just one sting from its tail will cause instant death to a human."
Looking at this dangerous beast, which is as big as 30ft in height, as Harry began to get worried while hands are shaking as he points his wand at it, it spoke, "human, you get one chance to answer. Answer my riddle right and I will let you pass and answer it wrong and I will eat you. Or you can just back off away now before listening to my riddle."
Confident Harry replied, "I'm ready. Please proceed with the riddle."
The Manticore then asked,
"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 the 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?"
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