After successfully resolving the crisis with those blasted skrewts, the Hogwarts trio paused briefly at Sherlock's suggestion to debrief on what they'd learned.
The lesson, in short: when facing an unknown creature, observe for weaknesses before launching a blind attack.
They set off again, with Cedric leading the way as before. Based on their earlier read of the directions—left, right, left again—this time they didn't encounter any dangerous creatures, but they ran into two dead ends in a row.
The high hedges rose around them like impenetrable green walls, blocking every path forward. Branches twisted and interlocked without a single gap, so dense that even light could barely filter through, leaving only a thick, oppressive shadow pressing down overhead.
"This is perfectly normal," Harry said, trying to encourage Cedric, who was beginning to look flustered. "It's an enormous magical maze—getting lost is part of the deal. We just backtrack and try another route. We won't lose much time."
But Cedric was growing anxious. "Sherlock," he said, unable to help himself, "is there any way to find the correct path directly? All this trial and error is costing us too much time. The Beauxbatons and Durmstrang teams might be catching up by now."
"No."
"What—even you can't manage it?"
A flicker of disappointment crossed Cedric's face.
Sherlock replied calmly: "We were the first team to enter the maze. There's no reference point, no prior data to draw from. Harry was right—trial and error is simply part of the process. There's no need to worry. As long as our general direction holds, we'll reach the center eventually."
Harry nodded. If Sherlock said so, there was nothing to panic about.
Cedric, however, still felt the pressure bearing down on him. Two wrong turns in a row had quietly shaken his confidence, and he'd begun to doubt his own sense of direction. Still, with Sherlock's reassurance echoing in his ears, he had no choice but to turn them around and lead the group back the way they came.
When they reached a three-way junction, he took a deep breath, steadied himself, and was just about to step into the right-hand passage—when Sherlock's voice cut through the air.
"Wrong way. Take the second passage."
Cedric stopped dead. He turned around; bafflement written all over his face. Harry's eyes went wide too, his expression were one of disbelief too.
Hadn't Sherlock just said there was no reference point—no way to navigate with any certainty? So how could he suddenly declare they were going the wrong way?
"We've already been down that passage."
Before either of them could voice their confusion, Sherlock answered the unspoken question.
It clicked immediately for both of them—especially Cedric. He replayed the last few minutes in his mind and realized, with a jolt of embarrassment, that the passage he'd been about to enter was the very same dead end they'd walked into not long ago.
He must have gotten distracted turning Sherlock's words over in his head, and made the most elementary mistake possible.
They hadn't even been in the maze that long, and he'd already lost track of the route? Thank Merlin for Sherlock.
He corrected his course at once and, following Sherlock's instruction, chose the second passage instead. Sure enough, this time the three of them walked a long, winding stretch of path without obstruction—no dead ends, no doubling back.
From there, they began encountering the traps and jinxes Bagman had mentioned beforehand, each one concealing its own particular brand of nastiness.
First came a drifting cloud of golden mist like flowing sand suspended in midair, coiling slowly through the center of the passage. The moment they drew near, the world lurched sideways. The ground seemed to swap places with the sky; the hedges hung upside down above them; the whole maze tilted and spun, leaving them dizzy and disoriented.
After that came a Boggart—not their first encounter with one.
Beyond those, there were Hinkypunks using their pale, luring light to draw the trio off course, a swarm of stinging Billywig insects, Fwooper birds with eye-watering plumage, and then, appearing alongside a tangle of Devil's Snare, a gang of Red Caps.
One had to hand it to Hagrid. He had clearly put considerable thought into this maze. The magical creatures and jinxes, individually, were nothing unmanageable but in combination, they became deceptive and genuinely dangerous, causing the trio no small amount of trouble.
The Boggart, for instance, burst out of a side passage right on Harry's flank. Naturally, it took the shape of a Dementor.
Harry and Cedric both froze. In that first instant, neither of them thought: Boggart.
Their minds leapt straight to the worst conclusion that the Ministry had lost its mind and installed a real Dementor inside the maze.
But a full year of Professor Lupin's relentless extra sessions had not gone to waste. The moment Harry's eyes landed on the Dementor, his wand arm snapped up on pure instinct.
He dug deep for the memory he always used—the first time he'd met Sherlock, the rush of joy he'd felt and roared: "Expecto Patronum!"
Under Cedric's stunned gaze, a silver hound burst from Harry's wand and hurled itself at the Dementor. The Dementor stumbled backward, tripped over its own robes, and fell.
Harry had never once seen a Dementor trip over itself. That was the moment it clicked. Not a Dementor. A Boggart.
He raised his wand again and called out, "Riddikulus!" The Boggart gave a sharp crack, dissolved into a wisp of smoke, and vanished. The silver hound went with it.
"Well done," said Sherlock.
Harry's face went faintly pink. Both times he'd acted on reflex but the results couldn't have been more different, and even he was a little surprised by himself.
"Harry—" Cedric stared at him, barely able to form the words. "Was that—was that a Patronus Charm? That's N.E.W.T.-level magic and beyond. Plenty of adult wizards can't cast it!"
He knew this wasn't the moment for exclamations. They were still in the middle of a maze. But after what he'd just witnessed, Cedric couldn't hold it in. The Patronus Charm had simply shaken him too profoundly.
"Well—after the Dementors showed up at school last year, I asked Professor Lupin for extra help," Harry said, doing his best to sound modest while privately enjoying every second of Cedric's gobsmacked expression. "It is genuinely difficult. It took me the entire school year to—"
"You're a genius, Harry!" Cedric was not listening to the modesty. "I'd wager only someone like Dumbledore could have pulled off a Patronus at your age! And I saw it clearly—a fully-formed Patronus, a hound—Harry, that's extraordinary! No wonder You-Know-Who couldn't finish you off!"
Steady on, that's a bit far.
The effusiveness was getting to be a little much even for Harry. But Cedric's words also made something click: that was the first time he'd ever produced a fully-formed Patronus. This was significant.
He thought back to the training sessions with the Boggart last year—his best efforts had yielded a shape with four legs and a tail, something vaguely animal-shaped but little more.
Dumbledore and Remus had both called it remarkable. But there's a difference between being told you've done well and actually believing it, especially when the standard you're measuring yourself against is Sherlock's magnificent silver lion.
He understood the gap, on some level. Sherlock was a genuine prodigy. And Harry's response to Dementors had always been more extreme than most—according to Remus, that was because what Harry feared most was fear itself. The Dementors simply hit him harder than they hit anyone else.
But he'd wanted so badly to close the distance between himself and Sherlock. And not managing a fully-formed Patronus had nagged at him quietly all year. He hadn't expected it to happen like this—mid-maze, in the middle of a tournament but here he was.
"It's honestly nothing," Harry said, smiling over at his partner. "If Sherlock had stepped in, he'd have done it far better than me."
"What?"
Cedric looked at Sherlock, his astonishment visibly deepening. Harry's meaning was obvious: Sherlock can cast the Patronus Charm too.
Merlin's beard. What kind of extraordinary teammates had he managed to pull?
He'd come into this thinking he'd hold his own as the senior member, set an example, pull his weight as the only adult of the group—and now he was looking at the very real possibility that he was just along for the ride.
These were two fifteen-year-olds who could produce a fully-formed Patronus. If he hadn't seen it with his own eyes, he would never have believed it. Even knowing it was true, if it ever got out, it would be front-page news in the Daily Prophet.
And Harry was telling him there was not one such person, but two.
Cedric took a few steadying breaths before he trusted himself to speak again.
"Sherlock," he managed at last, "what's your Patronus?"
"A lion."
"A lion?" Cedric blinked and then laughed, a genuine laugh, bright and unguarded. "A lion and a hound! You two really are perfectly matched, aren't you!"
Harry's ears turned red. Cedric wasn't wrong. A lion and a hound—in some sense, the two Patronuses really did suit each other remarkably well.
Is it because I've always been trying to catch up to him? Harry wondered. Is that why mine took that shape?
It wasn't quite the moment to say any of that out loud, so he steered the conversation elsewhere. "Sherlock—did you know all along it was a Boggart? Is that why you didn't step in?"
"Elementary, my friend."
Sherlock's smile was faint and unhurried. "Hagrid would love nothing more than to put an Acromantula in here, but even the Ministry's finest bureaucrats have their uses. I'd estimate they'd only sanction creatures up to a certain classification level for the maze. A real Dementor? That was never going to happen."
Harry and Cedric exchanged a look, both feeling a quiet twinge of embarrassment. In the heat of the moment, neither of them had thought of that at all.
After the Boggart, the creature that gave them the most trouble was the Fwooper—a XXX-class magical beast native to Africa, kept as an ornamental bird due to its extravagant plumage in brilliant shades of orange, pink, and deep green.
Even its eggs are boldly patterned in vivid swirls of color. At first glance it's genuinely beautiful, and there's a market for them as decorative pets, priced accordingly.
The catch is the song. A Fwooper's call is piercingly loud and carries far. Worse, prolonged exposure drives the listener to madness, stripping away rational thought and compelling increasingly erratic and sometimes violent behavior.
For this reason, Fwoopers are only legally sold under a permanent Silencing Charm renewed each month.
The one Hagrid had placed in the maze still had its Silencing Charm—barely. It was visibly on the verge of expiring.
Fortunately, both Sherlock and Cedric recognized it on sight. Cedric wasted no time, raising his wand and casting a fresh Silencing Charm before the creature could so much as open its beak.
If they hadn't known what it was, the moment the charm failed and the Fwooper sang, the situation would have become irreversible.
The Billywigs caused their own share of trouble.
These creatures are roughly half an inch long, vivid blue with a jewel-like sheen, their wings set on either side of their heads and beating so fast they become a blur—in flight the whole body spins like a top.
Like the Fwooper, they're classified XXX, and native to Australia.
Hagrid must have gone to considerable lengths to source creatures from every corner of the globe.
The primary threat from a Billywig is its stinger. Anyone stung immediately experiences severe dizziness, followed by a sensation of floating—victims levitate for several minutes.
Sherlock and Cedric recognized the insects immediately, but they were fast, small, and maneuverable, making them extremely difficult to hit.
Hagrid, in his characteristic fashion, had also released an unreasonable number of them. Still, the trio had anticipated exactly this kind of threat in their pre-tournament preparations.
Blasting jinxes, Freezing Charms, and Slowing Spells flew in coordinated volleys, and their teamwork—refined and sharpened through everything the maze had already thrown at them carried them through. It waws difficult, but manageable.
"I hate Hagrid," Harry declared afterward, still catching his breath. "He's genuinely trying to kill us."
"You're exaggerating," Sherlock said, sounding amused. "For a single person, this would be grueling. For a team of three, it's not particularly threatening."
Cedric nodded. "Think about it—even the Beauxbatons and Durmstrang students should be able to handle most of this. Combat magic is Durmstrang's specialty. Good thing we came in first."
"Agreed. Though the difficulty is slightly underwhelming—they really could have considered including some XXXX-class creatures. A weakened variant, perhaps."
"Weakened or not, one level higher might not sound like much, but the danger multiplies significantly. Don't underestimate it."
"Hang on—" Harry looked between his two teammates with a long-suffering expression. "'Even the Beauxbatons and Durmstrang students should be able to handle this'? That's a bit harsh on everyone else, don't you think?"
You can read more than 40 chapters on:
patreon.com/MikeyMuse