Absolute darkness brought with it absolute, paralyzing terror.
As time ticked away second by agonizing second, the three people frozen in place didn't even dare to move a muscle. Their bodies had become statues with fear.
Although they had already confirmed through cautious exploration that the ground beneath their feet was solid earth, the hallucinatory fear of suddenly falling into a bottomless abyss continued to torment them relentlessly.
The logical knowledge that the floor was solid did nothing to dispel the instinctive conviction that one wrong step would send them plummeting forever into infinite nothingness.
Hermione still clutched the school badge and map that Professor Watson had given her. Meanwhile, Ron wore the hastily constructed backpack containing the food they'd grabbed from the Great Hall. The bag sat awkwardly on his shoulders, looking rather funny, though no one had the presence of mind to care about appearances.
"We have to do something," Harry suddenly said through gritted teeth. "We can't just stand here forever. We'll go mad if we stay frozen like this."
"But we can't find the way forward," Ron panted heavily, his breathing was ragged. His voice was filled with despair. "We tried the Four-Point Spell—it doesn't work here. We're completely lost. We have no idea which direction to go, or if directions even mean anything in this place!"
"Perhaps we've missed some clue," Hermione said, forcing the words out. At a time like this, she clearly understood how critical it was to remain calm and rational, to not let the fear consume her ability to think.
She struggled desperately to control herself, fighting against the panic rising in her chest. She deliberately avoided looking at the surrounding darkness. Instead, she focused all her attention, on Harry and Ron's pale faces.
"What did Professor Watson say? He said that passing through the stone door, we would be transported to different areas of the Forbidden Forest. Yes, that's right, but right now we—"
"We should keep moving forward," Harry interrupted, still clenching his teeth hard. He knew exactly what Ron was about to say so he spoke first. "Maybe there is no correct path at all. The most important thing is to keep walking, to not give up."
Harry's unexpected statement surprised both Hermione and Ron considerably, catching them off guard. Hermione widened her eyes staring at him in disbelief. "How did you reach that conclusion, Harry?"
"I can't say exactly," Harry said, knowing even as he spoke that this might sound completely ridiculous. But given their current dire predicament, trapped in this void, they didn't seem to have any better options available to them. "Perhaps it's... intuition. Just a feeling."
Harry said this, then immediately added with more force, trying to convince himself as much as them:
"We can't give up here, can we? We can't just quit. If we're defeated by some actual danger in the competition itself, well, there's nothing shameful about that. But right now, it seems we haven't even officially entered the proper arena. We're still in whatever this preliminary test is."
His voice grew more passionate, and urgent: "If we fall here, if we give up at this first obstacle, we'll make Gryffindor and Hogwarts the laughingstock of everyone! The entire European wizarding world is watching. They'll say we couldn't even make it past the entrance. They'll mock us forever!"
After a moment of heavy silence, Ron said tremblingly, "You're absolutely right, Harry. You're completely right. Fred and George would mock me for the rest of my life because of this. They'd never let me forget it. I'd never hear the end of it."
Making critical decisions based purely on vague intuition certainly didn't align with Hermione's ingrained habit of thinking rationally and logically about problems.
Every fiber of her mind protested against this approach. But aside from doing this, there really wasn't any other good solution available to them.
"You're right, Harry," Hermione finally conceded after another moment of internal struggle. "We can't afford to waste any more time standing here paralyzed by fear. We have to at least try."
After brief contemplation, organizing her thoughts and steeling her nerve, Hermione took a deep breath. "I'll go first—I'll lead. Harry, you follow five feet behind me. And Ron, you follow five feet behind Harry. If you suddenly can't see me anymore—"
Hermione tried to speak in a casual tone, "—then that means there's probably a trap ahead, some kind of danger, and you should immediately change direction."
Harry completely ignored Hermione's suggestion without a second thought. He directly walked around her with determined steps, positioning himself at the front of their small formation.
He said lightly, as though it were the most obvious thing in the world: "This was my idea, Hermione, so naturally I should be the one to lead the way."
Before Hermione could give a response, Ron, whose face was still extremely pale and haggard, suddenly laughed twice with an ugly, forced smile.
"Maybe this is the very reason champion assistants exist in the first place," As he spoke, he reached out with a trembling hand and grabbed Hermione's arm firmly, pulling her behind himself
"Hey, you two!" Hermione cried out angrily. But undeniably, despite her irritation at their protective behavior, in this dark abyss that pressed against them from all sides, Harry and Ron's actions dispelled much of the fear that had been steadily growing like frost in her heart.
"At least we can't let ourselves lose to Cedric and his team," Harry said seemingly out of nowhere. Then, extending his hand and holding up his glowing wand like a torch in the darkness, he began to move forward step by step.
It was difficult to say how long they groped their way forward through the suffocating darkness, or how far they had actually traveled. Time seemed to have lost all meaning in this place.
In fact, in this disorienting space without any reference points, without walls or landmarks or anything to gauge their progress by, it was very difficult for them to maintain a truly straight line in one consistent direction.
For all they knew, perhaps they were constantly walking in a large circle, endlessly repeating their own steps without realizing it.
Apart from each other's pale, frightened faces, no other source of light ever appeared in the void. Nor did they find any exit, any doorway, any trap, any change of any kind.
The monotony was almost as frightening as the darkness itself.
But strangely, unexpectedly, as more time passed, the raw fear in their hearts didn't continue to deepen as one might expect.
Instead, against all logic, an inexplicable sense of security gradually arose.
Even the paleness in Ron's face gradually faded and became ruddy again.
"How far do you think we've actually walked?" Ron suddenly asked, having been chatting sporadically with Harry about Quidditch and Hermione about homework to dispel the lingering fear and pass the endless time. "It feels like we've been walking for hours."
"At least the distance from Hogwarts castle all the way to Hogsmeade village," Harry estimated thoughtfully, basing his judgment on the physical exhaustion in his legs and the ache in his feet.
He gave an answer that felt reasonable. "Maybe three or four miles? It's hard to say for certain."
The light that suddenly tore through the enveloping darkness came as unexpectedly and shockingly as when the darkness had first fallen upon them.
One moment they were in absolute blackness, the next—
The three people, who had felt as if they were trapped in a sealed, enormous room with invisible walls pressing in, suddenly felt a wave of damp, decaying air strike their faces.
The smell was overwhelming after the nothingness. Then the vivid, overwhelming world reappeared before their eyes in a rush of color and detail.
Without a doubt, they were now standing in the Forbidden Forest.
They'd made it through.
Enormous tree canopies towering hundreds of feet blocked out most of the sunlight from above, creating a everlasting twilight beneath. Everything in sight was in dark green colour. Even the thick, earth-brown tree trunks were covered broadly with green vines and patches of moss.
Harry turned his body around slowly, almost mechanically, still not quite believing the transition was real.
Behind him, Ron and Hermione wore dazed expressions, their mouths were hanging slightly open. He guessed his own expression was probably quite similar to theirs.
Then Harry made another discovery. The three of them were standing in the middle of a swamp of large size.
Dark, murky water covered with a carpet of ferns and trailing green vines reached above their ankles, soaking through their shoes and socks.
The swamp looked unfamiliar to Harry, definitely not the same one where they had reluctantly helped Snape catch leeches a few weeks ago.
"How long has it been since we entered the gateway?" Hermione asked instinctively when she noticed Harry glancing at the watch on his wrist, checking the time.
Harry looked at Hermione blankly, then looked down at his watch face again, squinting to make sure he was reading the hands correctly. His face was filled with complicated emotions.
His strange expression made both Hermione and Ron immediately tense up, their brief relief at escaping the darkness was vanishing. Could it mean that a long time had already passed while they wandered in the void?
The dim, twilight atmosphere of the forest made it impossible for them to accurately judge the actual time without a watch.
"About—" Harry blinked hard several times, confirming he hadn't misread the time, that his eyes weren't deceiving him. His voice came very flat with shock. "Two minutes. Just two minutes. That's all."
The three looked at each other in stunned silence, momentarily rendered completely speechless by this information.
"So... this was all just a bluff?" Ron finally said, his voice breaking the silence. He grinned shakily and let out a dry laugh.
"I think so," Hermione said slowly. "Psychological tactics. Quite interesting from a pedagogical standpoint, isn't it? Professor Watson is exceptionally good at this sort of thing."
She continued, her voice growing steadier as she went into intellectual analysis: "It was exactly like this when we were dealing with the Inferius in our second year, and also when we were practicing against Hinkypunks in our third year. He always adds these psychological elements to test us beyond just our spell work."
However, despite her words praising the clever teaching method, from Hermione's stern face and tight jaw, it was abundantly clear she didn't find the recent 'little trick' very amusing at all. She looked rather annoyed, actually.
"Where did that stone door go? How did we get here?" Ron asked, looking around in confusion. Then he shrugged, adjusting the backpack on his shoulder with relief. "Oh well, never mind the mechanics. At least we're out of that nightmare."
Setting aside the physical exhaustion in their legs and feet from all that walking, in that isolated and helpless environment of darkness, their minds had all undergone a severe test of endurance and will.
The psychological strain had been immense. All three of them looked exhausted now.
A shrill, mechanical cry suddenly came from somewhere in the dim forest around them.
The three immediately raised their wands defensively in synchronization and looked sharply in the direction of the sound.
Several Omnioculars, the magical broadcasting cameras cut through the damp, humid air with faint ripples of disturbance. Then they hovered around the three young wizards in an encircling formation, lenses were focusing and refocusing with soft clicking sounds.
The three people standing knee-deep in the murky water immediately tensed up even further. They knew that they must now be appearing on those giant screens back at the competition grounds, their images were broadcasted in front of the entire European magical community. Thousands of people were watching them right this second.
The thought was almost paralyzing.
"Ahem—" Ron's gaze moved away from the hovering Omnioculars, trying to ignore their presence. He raised his fist to his lips and coughed softly twice, clearing his throat. "Do you think we should now, uh, start looking for the other teams, or—Merlin's beard!"
Ron's words were cut off mid-sentence by a scream, his own scream that was even more high-pitched and sharp than the sound of the Omnioculars cutting through the air just moments ago.
Before the startled Harry and Hermione could even turn to ask what was wrong, they watched in rising horror as Ron was suddenly hoisted rapidly into the air in an upside-down position!
"This thing is—!" Harry started to shout a warning, but the words died in his throat.
The snake-like wriggling green vines wrapped around Ron's ankles made Harry freeze for a second.
But when his brain finally caught up and he tried to jump back in alarm, he made a terrible discovery. His own ankles, sunk deep in the concealing mud and dark water, had also been bound by green vines. Those vines were even now rapidly climbing up his calves with frightening speed, constricting tighter with each passing second!
"Damn it, we've landed in a patch of Devil's Snare!" Hermione shouted.
In this moment, even Hermione who had always held Professor Watson in the highest regard, who defended him constantly, who thought he was the finest teacher at Hogwarts mentally criticized him for his cunning and what she considered 'excessiveness'!
He completely hadn't considered that the champions might need some breathing room, some recovery time after just escaping from that psychologically traumatic darkness. Instead, he had deliberately, maliciously set the landing point of the transport spell directly into a patch of aggressive Devil's Snare!
What kind of sadistic teacher did that?
However, they weren't helpless first-year students anymore, stumbling through their first encounter with dangerous plants. This sort of thing, while frightening and dangerous, wasn't enough to leave them completely helpless and panicking.
Almost simultaneously, Harry and Hermione pointed their wands at their vine-wrapped feet.
"Incendio!" they both shouted in unison.
From Hermione's wand burst a controlled flame colored like bellflowers. Meanwhile, Harry's fire was a more aggressive, vivid orange flame that crackled with heat. Both spells were perfectly executed.
The two flames scorched the shallow puddles around them, sending up clouds of steam. The Devil's Snare vines coiled tightly around their legs immediately released their constricting entanglement and rapidly retreated to a greater distance.
Ron also fell heavily from his inverted position seven or eight feet in the air, landing with a tremendous splash in the water below.
"We need to get out of here immediately!" Hermione shouted urgently, maintaining her flame and using it to keep the vines at bay. "This whole swamp area is full of Devil's Snare!"
Hermione didn't actually need to give that reminder or explanation.
Harry's gaze swept around in a quick circle, rapidly assessing their situation and the terrain. He quickly identified and targeted the nearest spot where they could reach solid shore.
And Ron, who had fallen quite hard and taken an impact, didn't waste precious time moaning and groaning about his injuries either, despite the fact that he must be bruised and aching all over.
Ignoring the thick mud now plastered across his face and dripping from his hair, he coughed hard and violently to expel the foul swamp water from his nose and throat.
Then, still coughing and spitting, he struggled to wade as quickly as possible through the resistant water, following behind Harry and Hermione as they made their way toward the shore.
At least several dozen vine heads or maybe more, it was hard to count them all in the chaos, rose menacingly from the swamp covered with a thin layer of miasma. They swayed like cobras in an attacking posture.
The vines followed behind the three while maintaining a distance just beyond the reach of Harry and Hermione's conjured flames, stalking them like predators waiting for an opening.
How many terrified cries and gasps this horrifying scene elicited from the spectators watching on the giant screens back at the competition grounds, the three had absolutely no time or mental energy to consider.
The three people who finally jumped and scrambled ashore, pulling themselves up the muddy bank with their hands, had not yet had time to catch their breath or express their heartfelt 'we survived that' sentiments when their attention was suddenly drawn up.
A faintly visible red flare had been shot into the sky somewhere in the distance arcing above the forest canopy.
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