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Harry, Fleur, and Cedric rushed into the maze entrance.
The towering hedges surged closed behind them, twisting and rearranging in seconds. Before any of them could react, all three were cut off from each other.
The maze walls breathed damp earth and plant rot.
Harry drew a slow breath and pulled from his pocket the small crystal vial Hermione had pressed into his hand before the start. He uncorked it and threw back the golden liquid in one go.
The Felix Felicis hit him like warm sunlight from the inside out. An inexplicable confidence settled over him, steady and certain, filling every corner of his chest.
What followed was almost surreal.
At every fork, his feet carried him the right way without thinking. Every magical trap announced itself a half-step too early, and he sidestepped each one cleanly.
"Incredible," Harry muttered, shaking his head. It worked even better than he'd expected.
Elsewhere in the maze, Fleur was fighting for her life.
A pack of vicious magical creatures had her surrounded — small, scorpion-tailed things like miniature manticores, spitting sparks and raking the air with razor claws. She barely had time to breathe between spells. One creature driven back, another lunging forward. Her robes were shredded in three places. Dust and ash streaked her face.
Then one of them slipped behind her.
She sensed it too late. The creature's mouth gaped wide, rows of fangs aimed at the back of her neck. No time to turn. No time to raise her wand.
A black-and-red streak dropped from above like a falling blade. Wind exploded outward in all directions.
Several shrill screams rang out in quick succession. The creatures besieging Fleur scattered as if swatted by an invisible hand, crashing into the ground and going still.
Fleur was still catching her breath when she felt a firm grip close around her waist. The ground vanished beneath her feet.
She was airborne. And then she was in someone's arms.
A princess carry.
Hermione glanced down at Fleur, wide-eyed and cradled against her chest. "Per tournament rules, triggering an emergency rescue constitutes elimination. You've lost the match."
Deep in the maze, Harry and Cedric burst out of two separate passages almost at the same moment and nearly collided.
Both stopped short.
Then, ahead of them, sitting in the center of the maze, the Goblet of Fire. It pulsed with a faint blue glow, unhurried and patient, waiting.
Victory. Right there.
Behind them, the hedges lurched into violent motion. Thick, ropy vines erupted from the walls like arms reaching out, sweeping toward them from every angle.
"Run!" Cedric shouted, and he was already sprinting.
Harry was a half-second behind. Then they were both running flat out, side by side, the Goblet drawing closer with every stride. Harry pulled ahead by a fraction, just a sliver, but it was there.
The Goblet was almost within reach.
Cedric's foot caught on something. His body tilted, he staggered, and then a vine whipped around his ankle and yanked. He hit the ground hard. More vines piled on, coiling up his legs, his torso, moving fast.
"Cedric!"
Harry skidded to a stop. He looked back at Cedric pinned to the ground, then ahead at the Goblet, then back again. A single second of pure indecision.
The familiar black-and-red wind cut through the air.
Hermione appeared beside Cedric like she'd stepped out of shadow. One lazy flick of her wand and the vines collapsed, withering, splitting, falling away as if they'd never had any strength to begin with.
She grabbed Cedric by the arm and hauled him upright in one clean pull.
"Hogwarts champion, Cedric Diggory — incapacitated. Match terminated."
Her voice carried clearly to Harry. Then she was gone, Cedric still blinking in confusion beside her as they vanished from the spot.
Harry stared at the empty space where they'd been.
Then he turned back to the Goblet.
He breathed in. Stepped forward. Wrapped both hands around it.
The cheers he'd expected never came. Instead, the world lurched out from under him, a violent, wrenching pull from somewhere deep in his gut.
...
Hogwarts. The Quidditch pitch.
The crowd watched Harry's figure dissolve the instant he touched the Goblet.
Dumbledore's expression shifted. He was on his feet before anyone else registered what had happened.
"A Portkey." The word came out quiet, and very heavy. "Someone turned the Goblet of Fire into a Portkey."
The Goblet had spat Harry's name into the tournament without warning. And now this. The shape of something vast and deliberate pressed down on Dumbledore's chest.
...
The world spun. Scenery blurred into nothing.
Harry hit the ground hard, cold, damp earth against his palms and knees. The Goblet tumbled free and rolled away into the dark.
He pushed himself upright and looked around.
A graveyard. Ancient and desolate, deep into a moonless night. Headstones jutted from the earth in every direction, uneven and crowded. The air smelled of wet soil and something older, something wrong.
Not far ahead, a figure in black robes stood with its back to him. It was holding something.
The figure turned slowly.
Bellatrix Lestrange.
Cradled in her arms was a creature that might have once resembled an infant, grotesque, malformed, curled tight like something not yet finished.
"Seize him." The voice that came from it was a dry, crackling rasp.
Bellatrix's smile split wide and cruel. Her wand slashed through the air. An invisible force seized Harry by the throat and the chest, wrenching him upright and off the ground. He hung there, suspended, unable to move a finger.
"Bone of the father..."
She turned toward a nearby gravestone and aimed her wand at the earth below it. The ground split apart. A skeleton tore free of the soil and arced through the air, dropping into the large cauldron beside it. Green liquid churned and seethed inside, lit from within by something sickly.
"Flesh of the servant, willingly given..."
Something flickered in her eyes. Pure madness, bright and delighted. She raised her free hand, brought her wand down without the slightest hesitation,
Her hand fell at the wrist. Into the cauldron. Blood geysered from the stump.
She didn't flinch. Her expression didn't change. There was only that feverish, morbid glow on her face.
"Blood of the enemy..."
She walked toward Harry with the deliberate ease of someone with nowhere to be. Raised a dagger. Drew it across his arm in one smooth stroke. Blood welled up and ran freely, then bent toward the cauldron as if pulled by invisible hands, streaming down into the churning green.
Then, with almost tender care, Bellatrix lowered the grotesque creature into the cauldron.
Harry couldn't look away. His mind scrambled and skidded, searching for something to hold onto.
Eating a child? No, that wasn't, wait —
This scene.
He knew this scene.
The realization struck him like cold water. He'd seen this in Hermione's prophecy orb. This exact graveyard. This cauldron. This ritual.
Voldemort's resurrection.
But in the orb, there had only been the black-robed figure and Voldemort. He hadn't seen himself. He'd been there the whole time, just outside the frame.
The cauldron erupted.
Liquid thrashed and boiled over the rim. Steam poured into the night air. For a long moment there was only violent churning,
Then a figure rose.
Tall. Bone-white. Moving with the slow, deliberate certainty of something returning to a place it had never truly left. The skin was corpse-pale and hairless, the head bare, the face flat and featureless where a nose should have been.
Voldemort.
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