"What exactly did you see, Harry? What's out there?"
When Harry came tumbling back out of the raging blizzard dragged by the rope, skidding and sliding across the ice, battered but remarkably intact, all limbs still more or less where they belonged and functioning, Hermione finally allowed herself to breathe properly again.
The tight band of fear around her chest loosened.
She dropped the rope with trembling hands and lurched forward on the ice, hauling him up off the frozen ground. The binding had been pulled so desperately tight around his torso that he could barely draw breath, his face was reddening from the constriction.
Harry had clearly been frightened badly, deeply shaken by whatever he'd seen. His face was ashen, drained of all color until he looked almost ghostly. His expression was laced with something bitter and dark.
"Our guess wasn't far off, Hermione," Harry managed between gasps.
He tugged weakly at the rope still coiled tightly across his chest, trying to give his compressed lungs a little more room to expand.
"It's two giants."
He caught the instant change in her expression and rushed to clarify before panic could set in fully.
"Not real giants, though. Professor Watson used advanced Transfiguration to turn massive boulders into them. They look strange, though. No legs at all, just these flat oval stone pedestals supporting their bodies, like they're on platforms. It seems like they can glide across the ice somehow."
"Did you wake them, Harry?" Hermione's voice was tight.
Working rapidly from the blurred, indistinct silhouettes she had glimpsed through the storm and Harry's breathless description, Hermione pieced together a rough mental picture of the two stone giants. She asked the critical question in a voice that barely masked her dread.
"No—" Harry shook his head, still catching his breath.
"They didn't stir even slightly. But if we attack them directly—" he met her eyes meaningfully, "—I'd bet everything I own they won't just stand there quietly."
It didn't take much pondering or complex analysis to work out the objective of this trial: destroy the two stone giants, and presumably they'd receive something capable of melting the ice blocking access to the key in the outer chamber.
Simple enough in theory. Nightmarish in practice.
They had no clear idea what the stone giants were truly capable of in combat. But sheer size alone made them formidable opponents, and intimidating.
Worse still, the sheet of ice coating the arena beneath their feet made ordinary walking uncertain, let alone the kind of quick, decisive, evasive movement a real fight against massive opponents would demand. They'd be at a severe disadvantage.
"I need to see them myself, Harry." Hermione said this with her brow knitted deeply, still thinking hard, rapidly calculating angles and possibilities.
She was aware of Harry watching her expectantly, waiting for her to come up with a plan. "Then I'll know what to do. I can work with what I see."
At least Harry's dangerous reconnaissance had confirmed one critical thing: the stone giants didn't lash out blindly at anything that drew near their position. Getting close to observe them wouldn't be immediately dangerous.
SNAP. SNAP.
Hermione had just begun moving tentatively toward the center of the vast dueling arena, when two sharp, cracking sounds made them both freeze completely in place.
"What was that?" Harry's wand was up in an instant, sweeping the space around them in rapid arcs scanning for threats.
Whatever had made that distinctive noise was close, very close. He found absolutely nothing visible. Then the cold fell again suddenly, seeping through his clothes with shocking speed and driving straight into his bones like knives. And he understood with dread.
Clatter. Clatter. Clatter.
Their teeth were chattering violently in unison Hermione glanced at Harry with wide eyes, then down at herself, examining her own body.
"It was the red smoke keeping us warm," she said, her voice was beginning to shake from the cold already invading her body. "The stone's protective effect has completely worn off."
She pulled herself into a tight, defensive huddle, trying to conserve body heat, her face was rapidly going white with cold.
"It must be a rule built into the challenge's design. The warming effect from the red stones only lasts about ten minutes, maybe less, after that protective period it disappears entirely. We'll need to go back outside and replenish it constantly. This is part of the challenge."
"Oh, bloody hell," Harry swore with feeling, his mind was furiously cursing both this sadistic design and whoever had dreamed it up with such cruelty.
"Then what are we waiting for? Standing here discussing it?" His teeth were chattering so hard he could barely form words properly. "Freezing to death in a Triwizard task, all of magical Europe would be laughing about it for a century. 'Remember those idiots who froze solid?' Not how I want to be remembered."
The savage cold was already far too intense for clear thought or planning. Survival instinct kicked in. They scrambled and slid their way back desperately toward the stone door that led out to the relative warmth of the outer area.
Light flared brilliantly around them as they crossed the threshold, and they spilled back into the outside world in a tumble.
Hermione's eyes flew immediately to the enormous block of ice standing tall within its protective ring of four stone doors. Only when she confirmed it was still there solid, untouched did she exhale with relief that misted in the frozen air.
Almost simultaneously, startlingly synchronized, two of the other three stone doors blazed with light. Viktor and Cedric emerged from one door, Luna from another, all three of them were staggering out with the frantic, desperate energy of people who had narrowly escaped something terrible.
Their noses were flushed bright red, their competition robes were disheveled and frost-covered. It was plain that all three had already come to blows with whatever waited inside their respective chambers. They looked as rough as Harry and Hermione felt.
Harry nearly opened his mouth to ask Cedric and Luna what had happened to them in their trial, what they'd faced, but thought better of it at the last second. That was their secret to keep. He and Hermione helped each other carefully across the snow toward the slope where the red warming stones were scattered.
Fleur was already coming down from the embankment, freshly warmed by her own stone, watching the three teams scramble frantically out of the stone doors with amusement. She strolled over to Harry.
"What happened to you all in there?" she asked with curiosity.
"Can't say just yet," Harry replied shortly.
A Disarming Spell crackled through the cold air from Hermione's wand and burst against a snowdrift with a flash of red light, its magical force was punching through a red warming stone. Crimson smoke curled immediately around Harry's shivering body, and blessed warmth flooded back in like stepping into a hot bath.
"Not keeping secrets from you, Fleur, it's just not clear enough yet what we're dealing with," Harry explained as the warmth restored his ability to think. "Still working it out. Ask us later."
He caught Viktor's and Cedric's teams turning without hesitation and charging straight back into their respective arena doors.
Clearly, they'd figured something out, or at least had a plan to try. He and Hermione needed no further prompting or encouragement. Harry exchanged a brief word with Fleur and then the two of them plunged back through their stone door into the dueling chamber.
Harry glanced at his watch as they crossed back into the frozen arena, calculating rapidly how much time they realistically had left to crack this obstacle.
"All right, Hermione—what now? What's the strategy?"
Against ordinary opponents, Harry knew how to act on pure instinct, relying on reflexes and raw power. But something the enormous size of a stone giant, something different from human opponents, required a different, more thoughtful approach.
"Those giants aren't like trolls, you know," Harry said somewhat helplessly, thinking of their first year. "I can't just shove my wand up one's nostril and hope for the best."
Hermione didn't answer immediately. She chewed her lip hard, thinking intensely.
"The first problem we have to solve isn't the giants themselves, Harry," she said finally. "It's our feet. The ground."
She stared down at the hazardous sheet of ice coating the arena floor, frowning deeply.
"If we can't move properly and reliably, we can't fight properly. And honestly, I've never been any good at skiing or skating."
"Same here," Harry admitted with a helpless shrug, spreading his hands. "The Dursleys once thought about letting Dudley try ice skating one winter, but they couldn't find a pair of skates strong enough to hold him. He broke three pairs. After that they gave up."
"Melting all the ice isn't realistic either," Hermione continued her analysis.
"The arena is far too large. Neither of us has Professor Watson's masterful command of flame magic, we're not that advanced. And in this temperature, this extreme cold, any water we produced would just freeze back over almost immediately anyway."
She fell quiet, turning the problem over in her mind. Then—
"We can't skate. Oh, I've got it!" Her face lit up with realization.
The deep furrow in her brow smoothed over completely. Before Harry could even begin to form a question about what she'd thought of, she raised her wand decisively and pointed it at his trainers.
Harry felt himself grow slightly taller. He lifted one foot curiously and turned it over to examine the sole. It had sprouted a dense cluster of short, sharp metal spikes.
"That's brilliant!" Harry exclaimed with delight, setting his foot back down carefully.
He bounced experimentally on the spot, the spikes held firm, biting into the ice then took a few careful steps.
The difference was night and day.
"This is so much better. You're an absolute genius, Hermione."
Hermione cast the same charm on her own shoes and tested them near the stone door, moving cautiously back and forth, getting a feel for the new traction. She accepted the compliment with only a small, modest smile.
"It helps significantly. But we'll still be slower than usual," She straightened up. "Come on, Harry. I want a much closer look at these giants."
They set off together across the ice, their expressions grave and focused, trying to keep their spiked footsteps as quiet as possible despite the slight scraping sound they now made.
When Hermione finally saw the stone giants for herself up close, standing within fifty feet of them, she understood immediately why Harry had called them strange
Just as he'd described, each massive stone giant rested on a flat, elongated oval base instead of proper legs like a statue on a plinth.
The rest of the body was equally crude and geometric: a rough oblong torso, two long rectangular slabs for arms that hung at their sides, a perfect sphere for a head. Blunt, unfinished, almost carelessly assembled, like a child's building blocks scaled to monstrous size.
And yet there was nothing careless about the weight of them. Standing two full stories tall, they radiated a physical pressure that made it impossible to dismiss their potential strength.
GULP.
Harry swallowed hard. He looked left and right, studying the two identical stone creatures planted symmetrically on sides of the arena's center line.
"Which one do we go after first, Hermione?" he asked softly. "Left or right? Does it matter?"
"That doesn't matter at all, Harry," Hermione said, her voice was distant and thoughtful. "What matters is—"
Hermione stepped back two careful paces, studying the giant's crude construction with analytical eyes, measuring its probable reach with the long rectangular arms.
"Clearly we can't fight something like this up close, face to face. We'd be crushed in seconds. So..." Her gaze traveled deliberately downward.
She looked at the giant's single oval foot, the base it glided on. Her gaze shifted to the sheet of ice beneath it. Then it settled on the stone door they had entered through.
A long, heavy silence followed.
Then Hermione drew a slow, steadying breath, and something resolute and determined settled into her brown eyes.
"Listen carefully, Harry," she said, turning to face him fully. "Here's the plan."
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