The blizzard of ice dust was swept away quickly by the howling wind that never ceased, and visibility gradually cleared once more across the arena floor.
Harry and Hermione regrouped at their positions on the wall, gazing down with relief at the shattered remains of the stone creature scattered across the ice below.
"At this rate, we'll take down the next one in no time!" Harry said, his voice was bright with excitement and newfound confidence. They'd cracked the code. They understood the pattern.
"We need to move fast, though," Hermione forced herself to stay calm and practical despite their victory, checking the faint glow around her body.
"The protection from the red stone has less than four minutes left on it. Once it runs out completely, we'll have to leave immediately and replenish it. And if we abandon the Trial Chamber halfway through our attempt, everything we've accomplished will reset to nothing. We'll lose all our progress."
Harry nodded soberly, understanding the urgency. The two set off immediately toward the left endpoint of the central axis, intending to use the exact same proven strategy against the remaining stone creature standing untouched on that side.
HUM—
But just then, something shifted in the atmosphere.
Under Harry and Hermione's wide, horrified eyes, the shattered remains of the creature they had just defeated, the rubble they'd been celebrating began to emit a dull, earthen glow, growing brighter with each pulse.
"What's happening, Hermione?!" Harry's expression was equal parts shock and confusion; his earlier confidence was vanishing. "Didn't we defeat it? We saw it shatter!"
Hermione was no less bewildered than Harry, her mind was racing to understand. She stared, completely hooked, at the glowing, fractured stones scattered across the dueling floor far below their position.
When those stones began to rise slowly into the air, drawn by some unseen magical force like iron to a magnet, Hermione's blood ran cold with new realization.
"I have a very bad feeling about this, Harry," her voice trembled despite her efforts to stay calm. "Before we know what we're actually dealing with, I think we should play it safe and retreat."
CRACK. CRACK. CRACK.
The sounds of stone grinding against stone, reforming, echoed through the arena.
Watching the floating pieces begin to converge toward a central point, reassembling like a puzzle solving itself, Harry shuddered visibly. "I completely agree with you, Hermione. Time to go."
What was about to happen was already all too clear. The creature was reforming. Without another glance back or moment's hesitation, Harry and Hermione broke into a desperate sprint along the outer wall, racing frantically toward the transport gate that was their only escape route.
ROAR!
A thunderous roar tore violently through the air, so powerful it sent visible ripples shuddering through the atmosphere itself like heat waves. From the sound alone, it was plain: the stone creature, once destroyed, had been reborn. And it was absolutely furious.
BOOM!
They had barely covered half the distance to safety when a series of savage, dragon-like shrieks erupted violently behind them, forcing them both to stop dead in their tracks and look back.
"Run, Hermione! Don't stop!" Harry screamed.
One glance back, and Harry's heart nearly stopped beating.
The resurrected creature had entered a state of complete frenzy utterly unlike its previous precise behavior. It drove both massive fists into the ground with earth-shaking force and hurled two enormous blocks of ice straight at them simultaneously.
Worse still, far worse, the stone golem which had stood rooted firmly in place moments ago like a statue was now moving. Actually, moving forward. The sheer mass of it pressing toward them on its base was suffocating, overwhelming. The ground shook with each sliding advance.
The creature had completely abandoned its previous pattern, its stone-egg assault. Now it simply advanced relentlessly and kept hurling enormous chunks of ice in an unrelenting barrage, attack after attack after attack without pause.
The solid stone walls that had protected them trembled and crumbled under the devastating impacts, chunks of rock was breaking away in sheets and tumbling down.
Aside from that terrible night in the graveyard when Voldemort had returned from death, Harry had never felt so close to dying, so helpless.
The two of them ran as if their lives depended on it because they absolutely did and neither dared so much as a glance behind them to see how close death was.
BANG!
They swung desperately around behind the transport gate's stone frame and leaped without hesitation from the thirty-foot outer wall, trusting magic to save them. Hermione flicked her wand mid-air with precision, slowing their descent with a hastily-cast cushioning charm.
At that exact instant, a massive ice block, the size of a small building fell from directly above and struck the gate's frame with tremendous force, sending a bone-rattling vibration through the stone structure.
Harry's eyes went wide with terror. If the gate was destroyed, they were finished. Even if they fired the emergency flare Professor Watson had given them, there would be no time for anyone outside to reach them before the creature killed them.
Fortunately, mercifully, the gate held. The ice block shattered into a thousand pieces, scattering in every direction in an explosion of fragments, while the transport stone gate simply shook violently but did not fall or collapse.
The moment they passed through the shimmering vortex, Harry and Hermione both collapsed immediately in front of the entrance in the snow outside.
They lay there, completely drenched in sweat despite the freezing temperature, pupils constricted to extremes, their bodies were trembling with something uncontrollable as the adrenaline of near-death refused to release them.
"Are you both all right? What happened?"
Fleur who had been waiting by the enormous ice block that contained the sealed key, hurried over the moment she saw their absolutely wretched state.
Viktor, who had been sitting beneath the ice block in contemplation, and Cedric along with Luna both looking equally exhausted dragged themselves to their feet and rushed over as well with concern.
"Hah... hah... hah..." Harry gasped desperately for breath, feeling as though his heart might literally explode from the strain.
He looked at Hermione, who was still staring blankly at nothing, clearly shaken to her very core by what they'd just survived. He opened his mouth several times to ask how she was, but couldn't get a single clear word out past his gasping.
"What happened in there, Harry, Hermione?" Cedric asked, his face tight with worry and fear for them, while Luna slipped quietly around behind Hermione and gently patted her on the back in comfort.
After a long moment of recovery, the tingling in Harry's scalp finally began to ease. The shock was slowly loosening its iron grip on his nervous system.
"You—" He tried several times before a normal voice came out at last, his throat was raw. "Are you all right, Hermione?"
"We made it out alive, didn't we?" Hermione said, her voice was rough.
With Luna's gentle help, she managed to push herself upright into a sitting position. She looked around at the group gathered around them with concern. "Wait, why are you all out here? Did everyone leave the Trial Chamber at the same time?"
At that question, Cedric and Viktor both looked uncomfortable, almost embarrassed. It was Luna who answered without ceremony, blunt as ever and unconcerned: "Oh, we couldn't get through our challenges. We were just sitting here trying to figure out what to do next."
That, at least, was a small comfort to Harry and Hermione as they weren't the only ones failing. After warming themselves back up with fresh red stones, the two joined the others beneath the massive ice block and sat cross-legged on the cold snow with the gathered group.
No one spoke. A heavy, contemplative silence settled over them all.
The frantic urgency that had driven each team to seize the key as quickly as possible had faded now, replaced by something cooler and more calculating.
"Hey!" Fleur, struggling visibly to contain her impatience and curiosity, finally couldn't hold it in any longer. "Why is no one saying anything? You're all just sitting here!"
"Because we need to figure out how to get past whatever's behind that door," Hermione said flatly, shooting Fleur a look. "Thinking."
"Then why not talk about it?" Fleur said brightly, spreading her hands. "Maybe I can help brainstorm! I'm good at puzzles!"
Silence fell again.
Because everyone had already arrived at the same unspoken conclusion through their own reasoning: if none of them could overcome their current chosen challenge, choosing a new target door was only a matter of time.
They'd have to try different challenges. And in that case, saying too much now would be giving away valuable intelligence, feeding the competition tactical information that could be used against them.
"Ahem—" Viktor cleared his throat once, twice to get attention.
Watching the silence drag on uselessly, Viktor glanced around at the captains of both Hogwarts teams with his dark eyes.
"What if... we worked together?" he proposed carefully.
'Together?' The word hung in the air.
Everyone exchanged uncertain looks, skeptical. Work with the competition?
"What I mean is," Viktor clarified, leaning forward, "we pool our combined efforts to clear one challenge together, and then get whatever it takes to melt the ice block."
"But there's only one key, isn't there?" Cedric said carefully, voicing the obvious problem. "How would you divide it? Who gets it?"
"We could go by contribution," Harry suggested reasonably. "Whoever does the most to solve it gets the key."
"That's too hard to measure fairly, Harry," Hermione said, shaking her head immediately. "Who decides? How do you quantify contribution objectively?"
Viktor had clearly already thought this through carefully. "You're right, it's nearly impossible to judge fairly," he said quickly, pressing his case. "So, my suggestion is: leave it entirely to chance."
'Chance?' Several faces showed surprise.
Everyone looked at him intently, waiting for the explanation.
"Once we have the key—once we successfully melt the ice together, we use Transfiguration to create two perfect replicas," Viktor explained carefully. "Three keys total: two fake and one real. All three teams draw blindly. Whoever gets the real one, keeps it."
Viktor paused, studying the hesitation on their faces, reading their doubts, then pressed on determinedly. "And here's the condition: whichever team wins the key must step back in the next challenge and put their full effort into helping the teams that didn't win. What do you say?"
Hermione's brow furrowed subtly; her mind was working.
The logic holds... mostly. But there's a gap in the reasoning.
What if there were only two keys in total across this entire contest? Or three? That would mean at least one team was guaranteed to end up with nothing at the end. Was that risk worth agreeing to?
Cedric's lips parted slightly; he had been about to raise that exact same flaw in Viktor's proposal. But then he thought better of it after a moment's reflection.
If it came down to that, and his team ended up empty-handed through honest luck and fair chance, there wasn't really much to complain about.
He glanced at Hermione across the circle. She caught his eye and held it.
They were thinking the same thing.
"Then let's work together," they both said.
Both Hermione and Cedric stood at the same moment and spoke at exactly the same time, their voices were overlapping.
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