Chapter 215: Twelve at the Hedge

Dumbledore's notice went up in all four common rooms on the same morning, and the ink carried an authority that did not invite discussion.

To prevent any further escalation between the schools, all joint gatherings before the final task are cancelled. Champions are to concentrate on their preparation. The final task will proceed as arranged.

Edward laid the parchment flat on the long table and ran a fingertip along the edge while he worked out what it cost him. The one remaining plan for getting near Krum before the maze had just been taken off the board, and by their own headmaster.

Draco leaned over his shoulder to read it and made a sound of pure disgust.

"That is Karkaroff's doing and you know it is. He complained to Dumbledore about our discipline and then went straight back to his tents, and the result is that his four cannot be looked at by anybody until the day itself. He has not protected them from us. He has put a wall round them."

"Which is what I keep coming back to." Edward's eyes went to the window and to the black tents standing in the mist at the bottom of the grounds. "If a headmaster wanted his students left alone he would ask for it. Cancelling everything at once looks a great deal more like somebody making certain nobody else gets a second look at them before the day."

Draco's face did not improve.

"Then what happens to you in there? Twelve go into that maze, four are ours, and theirs have not behaved like people since the joint lesson. If they come at you together in the middle of a hedge, who is going to reach you?"

"Nobody. That is the arrangement," Edward said without any drama, because it was simply true. "So I go in expecting it."

"Then do not be careful." Draco put a hand on his shoulder and for once there was nothing performed about any of it. "Not with the gloves and not with the fire. Whatever those four are now, they are not going to fight you by the rules, and there will not be a professor within four hundred yards of you when they stop pretending."

The days went past in preparation, and then it was the evening of the final task.

The sun going down over the Quidditch pitch had turned the whole field a deep gold-red, and the field was no longer a field. An Undetectable Extension Charm had opened the ground out to more than ten times its size, so that from the stands it looked exactly as it always had, and stepping onto it produced a slow turning sensation behind the eyes as the space refused to agree with itself.

Out of that ground had grown a maze of twisted thorn twenty feet high, the branches deep purple and putting out a faint light of their own, the whole of it smelling green and sweet and slightly wrong. It was a Northern plant, with barbs the size of a fingernail under every leaf, and what they carried would take the feeling out of an arm in under a minute.

The stands had been divided into three, one school to each, and the flags were out. It was not the noise of the first task; there was a weight under it that had not been there in November.

In the Ministry box Cornelius Fudge sat upright in stiff navy blue and tapped a silver cane against the boards at intervals. Beside him Bartemius Crouch was the colour of paper, his eyes going over the mouth of the maze without focusing on it and his fingers working at his own cuff, and nobody in that box looked at him closely enough to see what anybody looking closely would have seen.

The twelve champions gathered at the entrance with the whole ground watching them.

The Hogwarts four stood together. Edward was in black with the Heart-Flame Crest gloves throwing a low gold-red at the cuffs and a leather pouch at his belt holding two phials and the mirror. Harry was beside him, tense through the shoulders and entirely determined about it. Cedric looked as composed as he always did. Adeline had her sleeves turned back and was straightening the rune-work embroidered along them, and her eyes had not left the mouth of the maze since she arrived.

Twenty feet away Draco mouthed two words at Edward and did not care who saw him do it, with Theodore and Zabini either side of him, while Crabbe and Goyle had turned the other way entirely and were watching Durmstrang.

Durmstrang were worth watching. Krum stood with no expression whatever, eyes on the ground four feet in front of him, and Volodya, Vasiliev and Sokolov stood in the same attitude either side of him with their fingers slightly curled. Edward watched them for the better part of a minute before he understood what was wrong with the picture.

They were breathing together. Not approximately. Exactly.

The Beauxbatons four were in silver-white, and Fleur had her head down with Elodie Lemair, Lena Moreau and Margot Dupont, going through something rapidly in French. Whatever the last two tasks had done to the other schools had not touched her ambition.

On the platform above the entrance the staff had taken their seats. Dumbledore was in purple velvet and the blue eyes behind the half-moon spectacles were as mild as they ever were, and they went across the Durmstrang line and into the maze and back again rather more often than mildness would have required.

Snape stood at his shoulder with his robes moving in no wind. His gaze crossed Edward on the way past and stopped for a moment, and what was in it was not the ordinary dislike. It was closer to watchfulness. Then he looked at the maze instead, and the hand inside his sleeve closed.

Moody's magical eye was going round hard. It swept the depth of the hedges, came back, went over the twelve, and settled twice as long on Edward and on Harry as it did on anybody else.

And Karkaroff had not taken his place on the platform. He was standing at the end of his own students' line with his hands behind his back, and he had walked the same six paces and back perhaps thirty times. Every so often he looked up toward the Forbidden Forest. His face had no blood in it and his lips were moving, and he had the appearance of a man who has already worked out which direction he will run in.

"Champions. Honoured guests."

Crouch had got himself to the centre of the entrance and put his wand to his throat, and the voice that went out over the ground was steady enough if one did not know what to listen for.

"Welcome to the final task of the Triwizard Tournament. The Twisted Thorn Maze."

The cheer went up and he waited it out.

"The Triwizard Cup stands upon a dais at the centre of this maze. You will cross the maze to reach it, through such traps, creatures and obstacles as lie between. The first champion to lay a hand upon the Cup takes one hundred points, and their school takes the tournament."

"Beyond the points there is a prize of a thousand Galleons. You may defend yourselves against one another and you may retaliate, but any champion using a spell judged excessively dangerous is removed on the spot. If at any point your life is in danger, send up red sparks and you will be reached within a minute, and that counts as your withdrawal."

He raised a carved wooden box and shook it so that it rattled.

"The order of entry is drawn. Fair to all and decided by nothing but chance."

They drew by school. Beauxbatons took one, five, nine and twelve, with Elodie leading and Fleur last. Durmstrang drew two, three, six and ten. Hogwarts came last: Cedric four, Adeline seven, Harry eight, and Edward unfolded eleven.

Edward looked at the list while Crouch read it out and did not like the shape of it. The Hogwarts four had come out spread as widely across the order as it was possible to spread them, Durmstrang were threaded evenly through the gaps, and he himself was eleventh: everybody he might have worked beside would be a quarter of a mile into the hedges before he was through the entrance.

Chance had produced a draw that isolated him almost perfectly. It was the kind of thing chance did about one time in a hundred.

"Three minutes. Champions to your places."

The ground went quiet, and what was left was the wind moving through twenty feet of thorn, which was not a restful noise. They took position one by one: Elodie first with her wand already up, then Volodya without a flicker of hesitation, then Krum with his eyes still fixed on nothing.

Harry looked back down the line at Edward and gave him a short nod, and got one in return.

Edward used the last of the three minutes on the platform. Moody's magical eye had come round to rest on him and made no attempt to leave, and below it Karkaroff had stopped pacing and stood wringing his hands, visibly more frightened than any of the twelve about to walk into that maze.

 

"Three. Two. One."