No wonder he looked furious, Harry thought. His eyes darted over to his competitor. Krum looked like he was about to murder Bagman for essentially announcing his failure to the world. Eighteen points was the lowest score of any of them had received in any of the trials so far.
"In third place is Miss Fleur Delacour of Beauxbatons, with a score of forty-five. Miss Delacour was the last to retrieve her chest, earning her ten points, and also the third to open the chest, earning fifteen, and third to leave the water with her egg, for another fifteen points. She earned five bonus points for being the quickest to solve the riddle of the locks... once she finally had possession of her chest." The audience got a laugh as a sequence of Fleur chasing the selkies was replayed. Fleur's dissatisfaction was offset by the fact that, despite her poor performance, she still wasn't in last place, and she managed to keep her head held high.
"In second place is Mr. Cedric Diggory of Hogwarts, with a score of sixty-seven. Mr. Diggory was the third to find a chest, giving him fifteen points, and the second to open his, earning him twenty, and the second to exit the water with the egg, earning him another twenty points. He also gets an extra fifteen points for excellent demonstrations of a modified cyclone-shield charm, modified bubble-head charm, and an extreme skilful partial human transfiguration of his feet. He did, however, lose three points for attempting to touch Harry Potter's treasure chest."
Cedric shrugged sheepishly as he leaned towards Harry. "Hey, I had to give it a shot," he said.
"Finally, in first place is Mr. Harry Potter, with a score of ninety-five points. Mr. Potter was the first to find a chest, first to open it, and the first to exit the water with his egg. Each of these feats earned him twenty-five points. In addition, he will receive an additional twenty bonus points for excellent use of gillyweed and a nearly flawless performance throughout the entire trial. The only thing keeping him from a perfect score was poor timing with his gillyweed and a rather simplistic repertoire of spells."
Hey, don't blame me if I stick with what I'm good at, Harry thought. He wasn't complaining, though, as he had just scored the highest score in the tournament thus far. I guess good planning and preparation can still beat Krum, he concluded happily. This single trial was enough to vault him from last place to a first-place lead. With everyone clapping and cheering wildly, he looked around the stands for Hermione, but she was still missing. He was now getting antsy, wondering if something had happened to her during the trial. He was ushered back into the champion's tent.
"Congratulations on a fine performance and a wonderfully entertaining Trial of Water, champions!" Bagman happily proclaimed. Unfortunately for him, he was met with unamused glares from Krum and Fleur, while Harry was simply distracted. Cedric was the only one who gave him a smile. "Ahem. Well, on with the show, as they say. Your next trial will be the second Trial of Champions, in four weeks. That's February 11th, by the way. This will be one of the greatest tests of your creativity and preparation. Are you ready for this?"
His attempt to drum up some excitement was met with three unamused stares from the older champions and Harry glancing out of the tent. "It will be a wandless duel!"
"What?" all of them shouted together. Wandless magic was almost unheard of, save for very specialized skills like occlumency, the Seer's visions, animagus transformations... none of which were really duelling material.
"Oh, no, you won't have to perform wandless magic," Bagman chuckled. "It's a standard duel until you're knocked out of the arena or subdued, but the only additional rule is no wands. You're allowed to bring in any other kind of tool that you can carry in your hands. The tools, of course, must be magical in nature, non-living, and of course no dark magic or dark artifacts." Well, darn, thought Harry. I was sure I was capable of lifting Hermione into the arena. I wonder how much Moody weighs?
Harry left the tent as quickly as he could. Most of the crowd had already left, and Harry still couldn't see Hermione in the stands. Fearing the worst, he began running towards the castle, but as soon as he ran past the bleachers he heard, "Harry!"
Hermione was hiding beneath the seats. Harry ran up to her, asking "Are you alright? Why are you hiding under there?"
"I'm fine," she answered. "But I didn't get to Skeeter. I got distracted by something on the map..."
"Distracted? What could have distracted you from getting back at Skeeter? Was it serious?" Harry asked. His question was answered when a big, shaggy black dog leapt out from the shadows behind Hermione and pinned Harry down, wagging its tail madly.
Hermione sighed. "Yes, Harry, it's Sirius."
.
.
.
🎉The novel is available in PDF, visit us in our Ko-Fi store🎉
🎉ko-fi.com/madarasama125🎉