Fleur was having a difficult time lately. Elizaveta and Corvus were nowhere to be found. She tried to send a small note for lunch, and the owl stayed where it was. She panicked over the implication. Yet when she called Tibby to ask, the 'strange' elf was completely normal.
Supreme Tibby knows where Master Supreme Chicken and Mistress Wolfy are. Fleur was starting to like Tibby's personality; it has a unique taste for names and a brand of madness to it.
And where might they be, Supreme Tibby? She asked, bending in with the supreme sense of naming.
They work to make small supreme like the foggy one. Fleur blinked at that answer. Were they making love in front of the poor elf? She couldn't help but want to embrace the broken elf. She hugged him tightly.
Do not worry, Tibby, I will never do such things. Whenever you feel unsafe, please don't hesitate to come to me.
She was going to talk with Elizaveta about this.
-
By the day of the Third Task, Hogwarts had stopped pretending the tournament was a school event that happened to have foreign guests.
It had become a continent-wide stage, wearing school colours.
Parents, officials, noble families and alliance delegates sat in the stands and watched the final preparation charms settle over the arena. Durmstrang wanted correction. Beauxbatons wanted vindication. Hogwarts wanted the cup to stay where it already believed it belonged.
The arena matched the tone.
A great triangle had been raised on the grounds, its outer lines cut in black stone and silver runes bright enough to be seen from the highest seats. Within it sat three smaller triangles joined around the centre, each one assigned to a champion. At the heart of the great structure stood three unstable magical cores on separate pillars, each core bound to only one triangle. If one champion failed, the backlash would remain in that champion's section alone.
The champions were not there to entertain the crowd by blowing up a school.
They entered together.
Altair Black stepped into the Hogwarts triangle in formal black trimmed in restrained silver, wand already in hand and expression as unreadable as ever. Fleur entered hers in Beauxbatons blue, alluring enough to make half the audience forget how young she still was, yet remember who her betrothed was. Viktor Krum took the Durmstrang side without flair, shoulders loose, jaw set, and eyes already on the centre.
The judges' platform stood above them.
Vinda Rosier addressed the grounds without needing to raise her voice.
"The Third Task will be judged on creativity, control, and efficiency. Each champion will face the same sequence in their own section. First, hostile constructs. Second, an escalated combat phase. Third, containment and stabilisation of the core bound to their triangle."
Her gaze swept the crowd once.
"Begin."
The opening tone rang.
The first wave formed at once.
Hostile constructs rose out of each triangle in shapes of compressed force, stone, and moving spellwork. There were no beasts, mazes or riddle tricks meant to flatter weak minds. They were made to be fought, measured, and broken.
Altair answered first.
A ring of conjured daggers and swords made of fire, lightning and magma appeared around him, followed by a wider halo of arrows. He did not rush forward. He barely moved at all. The blades and shafts moved under his command like a private storm, some hovering close for defence, others shooting outward in sharp, clean strikes. One construct lost an arm to a lightning arrow. Another was stabbed through the face with a dagger made of magma. A third was pinned in place by two fire arrows before a heavier blade cut through its core.
It was cold and neat work.
Altair looked less like a student and more like an executioner who had accepted a smaller room than usual.
Fleur's answer came in blue silver light.
Butterflies burst around her, delicate for only the first glance and murderous immediately after. They were beautiful enough to make the audience lean in and varied enough to justify the attention. One landed on a construct's shoulder and exploded in white heat that turned the upper half to ash. Another touched the arm of a second construct and froze it from the point of contact inward until the whole limb shattered away. A third struck low and released a crack of lightning that drove straight through the torso. One green-winged cluster bathed another target in acid and ate through its form so quickly the spectators in the lower rows recoiled.
Beauty did not make it less violent.
If anything, it made it worse.
Krum chose force.
Stone conjured in chunks around him, large and small. He drove them with force like cannon shots. The first construct he hit did not stagger. It ceased to be a relevant shape. Another lost half its body and was finished by a second boulder before it fully fell. Krum did not waste flourish on any of it. He built ammunition, fired it, corrected the angle, and fired again.
The first phase ended with all three champions still standing and all three sections cleared. In Krum's case, his section was mostly destroyed.
The judges wrote.
The crowd did not need the official board to understand the first ranking. Fleur had taken the eye most completely. Altair was creative yet lost to the elegant beauty of the butterflies. Krum had been effective and least beautiful about it.
The board confirmed it a breath later.
First in creativity, Fleur Delacour.
Second, Altair Black.
Third, Viktor Krum.
That pleased France. It did not calm Durmstrang.
The second wave began without pause.
This time, the constructs came mixed.
Some rushed for close work. Others attacked from range. Some were fast and slight, built to distract and cut. Others carried heavier frames and tried to push straight for the central lanes. The phase had been designed to test more than taste. It tested distributed control under pressure.
Altair dominated it.
That did not happen through spectacle. It happened through an assignment.
The daggers closest to him became melee interceptors and stripped the smaller constructs before they could get within arm's reach. The arrows moved farther out and took the ranged attackers in the joints, throat, and chest. Two broader blades rotated low and cut apart anything that tried to reach his core line. He was not merely conjuring weapons and hoping his magic was clever enough to finish the thought. He was commanding several different groups at once, each with a separate task, each under enough control to look almost insulting.
A construct of heavy stone reached him anyway.
Altair did not retreat. Three daggers drove into its knee, one into the throat, and an instant later, a black spear of conjured steel punched straight through the centre and anchored it to the floor.
Fleur remained excellent.
Her butterflies changed function cleanly under pressure. Ice for one target, fire for another, lightning where two constructs crossed paths too near one another. Yet her magic still answered as one family of constructs, one elegant method branching into several effects. Altair was doing something harder. He was running a battlefield in layers.
Krum fought well and without confusion, but his method stayed unchanged. Brutal force with good judgement. He shattered what came close and kept the lane clear through impact. When the second phase ended, the board confirmed what the sharper eyes had already seen.
First in control, Altair Black.
Second, Fleur Delacour.
Third, Viktor Krum.
Durmstrang's section had gone quiet by then.
Krum did not look up at the board.
He was already looking at the core in his triangle.
So were the others.
The final phase began with a low, violent pulse from the centre. Each unstable core cracked, split light, and entered overload.
This was not a combat round anymore.
This was the part that judged power and practical mastery rather than flair.
Altair moved first and most directly. He did not try to soothe the core or circle it. He struck it with layered binding, then fed enough force into the containment pattern to crush the instability under his own output. The whole triangle flashed white once, hard enough to make the mirrors above the arena flare, then the crackle collapsed inward and the core steadied under his hand.
It was not pretty, but it was absolute.
Krum came second in every sense that mattered. He handled the core like he handled matches, by meeting force with more force and trusting his own discipline not to let the exchange break him before it broke the target. The stabilisation took longer, ran rougher, and shook his triangle twice before he finally forced it down into obedience. Crude compared to Altair, yet Strong enough to count.
Fleur took the most difficult line for this phase, as the phase itself did not favour her best qualities. She had control and refinement. She did not have Altair's overwhelming suppression or Krum's more direct brute answer. Her core steadied last, and only after one sharp spill of power across the floor that cost her clean marks, even though the containment held within her triangle exactly as designed.
The boards were updated one final time.
First in magical potency and practical containment was Altair Black.
Second, Viktor Krum.
Third, Fleur Delacour.
Then the overall board appeared.
The winner of the Triwizard Tournament was Altair Black of Hogwarts.
The grounds erupted.
Hogwarts rose first, loud and shameless and entirely entitled in its joy. Durmstrang did not move for the first two breaths. Beauxbatons applauded for Fleur with far more restraint and far more dignity than most British students would ever manage in defeat.
Altair did not smile.
He inclined his head once toward the judges, then once toward the stands where his house expected him to confirm the obvious. Fleur stood very still, disappointment tight in her posture and nowhere else. Krum accepted third with the expression of a man already measuring the next available correction.
Corvus, watching from the stands beside Elizaveta, approved the result with nothing more than a single nod.
The next two hours belonged to relief, celebration, bruised pride, and rearranged intentions.
The students ate, shouted, boasted, and lied about how certain they had always been. Hogwarts treated Altair's victory as proof of natural law. Beauxbatons gathered around Fleur in smoother, quieter circles. Durmstrang did not celebrate anything.
That alone told the sharper watchers what the final Quidditch match would become.
They wanted a title to take back home.
By the time the last school match was called, the air over the pitch had changed.
Beauxbatons entered first. Captain Delphine Morel led the side in pale blue with Colette Marchand and Isabelle Renard flanking her as chasers. Marc Boucher and Thierry Lemaire took the beater positions. Julien Sorel mounted in front of the hoops. Étienne Vallois, elegant as ever and doomed to be so publicly, took the high line.
Durmstrang followed in deep crimson.
Stoyan Petrov led them. Mila Dragunova and Sergei Antonov took a position with him. Yelena Markov and Pavel Ilyin held the beaters' line as they had come for punishment rather than sport. Lev Orlov settled before the hoops. Krum rose above them all and did not once look toward the stands.
Madame Hooch released the balls.
Durmstrang did not merely play better.
They played offended.
Petrov took the opening and scored before Beauxbatons had properly touched the Quaffle. Dragunova followed with a second goal less than a minute later after Markov drove a Bludger through Boucher's intended lane and broke the French rhythm before it formed. Antonov made it thirty-nil by coming through the middle under Renard's shoulder and finishing through the left hoop while Sorel was still trying to reorganise the line in front of him.
Beauxbatons tried to answer with shape and passing.
Durmstrang answered by breaking both.
Markov and Ilyin were merciless. They did not waste time on pretty intimidation. They hit the passing lanes, the support angles, and the recovery routes. Morel was forced high. Marchand was cut low. Renard took a Bludger off the broom tail and needed several seconds to recover, which in a fast match was almost an act of surrender.
Petrov scored again.
Forty-nil, then fifty.
Beauxbatons finally found one opening after Vallois dropped low enough to drag Krum's attention with him, and Morel used the moment to cut inside Antonov. She put the Quaffle cleanly through the centre hoop and earned a roar from the French section that sounded more relieved than triumphant.
Fifty-ten.
That was as close as the match ever felt.
Durmstrang went harder after that.
There was no fury in it. No childish attempt to humiliate. They simply played as the superior team and stopped extending even the smallest courtesy to Beauxbatons' preferred style. Antonov and Dragunova began scoring through sustained pressure rather than individual breaks. Petrov controlled the pace. Orlov denied the two French attempts that followed with the heavy efficiency of a man insulted by the idea of the Quaffle entering his hoops twice in one afternoon.
At seventy-thirty, the outcome was obvious.
At ninety-thirty, it was a lesson.
At one hundred and twenty to thirty, even the Beauxbatons supporters had gone quiet enough to hear the Durmstrang bench shouting in German after each clean sequence.
Vallois tried to save something of the afternoon in the air.
Krum did not permit it.
The Beauxbatons seeker still flew beautifully. That was not enough. Krum flew as if the Snitch belonged to him by prior right. When the first gold flash broke across the eastern side of the pitch, Vallois took the more graceful route. Krum took the faster one. He cut lower, forced the French seeker wide, and then corrected once with the sort of compact violence that separated professionals from talented boys.
He caught the Snitch without drama.
Madame Hooch's whistle ended it.
Durmstrang won the final Quidditch match by two hundred and seventy to thirty.
Durmstrang had taken the school bracket outright.
The cup was presented to Petrov. He accepted it with the same expression he might have worn for a border treaty or a burial. Krum stood just behind him, still unsmiling, which somehow made the win look even harsher. At least they were not returning empty-handed.
That finished the school-side tournaments properly.
Hogwarts held the main Triwizard title and the Potions Cup. Geneviève Rosier, Morag MacDougal, and Draconis Primus had earned that one earlier by brewing cleaner and thinking faster than anyone else at the tables. Durmstrang held the duelling title and now Quidditch as well. Katya Ziegler had taken the duelling final against Septimus Selwyn by forcing him into defensive corrections until he lost his footing near the edge of the platform. Beauxbatons, for all their polish, left with applause and very little else.
The pattern was clear enough for everyone to read.
Hogwarts had taken the highest prize.
Durmstrang had taken back enough silver to avoid going home insulted.
Beauxbatons had produced moments but not trophies.
As the pitch emptied and the evening drew on, the students went back toward the castle for the final meal. Fleur remained at the rail for a moment longer and watched Krum descend with the Snitch in one hand and no need whatsoever to enjoy the crowd to know he had corrected his standing.
Altair passed behind her with the cup already won and the sort of calm that made celebration look beneath him.
Durmstrang had taken one title back.
Hogwarts still had the one that would be remembered longest.
That, in the end, was enough.