A massive silhouette appeared at the far end of the corridor, blocking the path of all three.
It was a lion—enormous, its body draped in a dense mane of tawny brown fur. Four thick, powerful legs ended in great claws that sank into the earth, glinting with a cold, razor edge. A long tawny tail swept lazily behind it, the black tuft at its tip catching the eye.
But it was the creature's head that defied all reason.
The body was unmistakably a lion's—yet the face was a woman's.
Even Harry recognized it this time.
A Sphinx.
He had seen a photograph of one in The Monster Book of Monsters—that vicious, snapping volume Hagrid had assigned them. He couldn't recall its specific traits, but he remembered the caption beneath the illustration clearly enough: classified by the British Ministry of Magic as a XXXX-level creature.
Damn.
Hadn't Sherlock just said Hagrid could only place creatures rated XXX or below inside the maze?
Sherlock wouldn't be wrong about something like that. Which meant the Ministry's oversight committee had completely dropped the ball, letting a high-danger creature slip through into the competition.
Harry fumed silently, but his hand had already moved—wand raised, almost by instinct. He checked himself, though, remembering Sherlock's earlier instruction: don't attack first. He held his ground, watching the Sphinx's every movement with sharp, wary eyes.
Cedric, for his part, was steadier. He dropped his voice low and spoke to the other two.
"It's a Sphinx. XXXX-level. Extremely dangerous. If we can avoid a confrontation, we should."
"But it's blocking the path," Harry murmured, his gaze was never leaving the creature.
What surprised him was that the Sphinx hadn't crouched into an attack stance while they whispered. She simply paced back and forth across the corridor, almost regally—her eyes never once leaving them.
"Sphinxes originate from Egypt," Sherlock said, his tone steady and precise, as though reading from an invisible file. "Their defining trait is riddles. They stop travelers, pose a question, and if you answer incorrectly, they attack."
He paused. "For nearly a thousand years, wizards have employed them as guardians of precious objects and hidden passages."
"Exactly what I was going to say," Cedric added, unsurprised as ever by Sherlock's encyclopedic knowledge. "As long as we don't make a move against her—or simply turn back now—she won't attack. That's also an option."
Harry caught on quickly. "You mean go around? Find another route?"
"The safest play," Cedric nodded. He hesitated, then glanced toward Sherlock. "Although—we could try answering her riddle. But if we engage with the question, we can't leave halfway through. We'd have to give an answer, or she attacks us all the same." He studied Sherlock for a moment. "What do you think?"
Sherlock gave a quiet, almost amused smile and walked forward.
The Sphinx went still the moment someone approached her directly. Her great body tilted forward slightly, her woman's face was turning toward Sherlock.
When she spoke, her voice was unexpectedly low and husky—rough, yet strangely melodic. Paired with that face, it was disarming enough that fear, for a moment, became secondary.
"You are close to your destination," she said. "The fastest way forward—is through me."
Harry and Cedric exchanged a glance. Everything Sherlock had deduced was correct: the direction from which the Acromantula had come was indeed the shortcut to the Cup. They simply hadn't anticipated a Sphinx standing guard over it.
"You won't let us through easily, will you?" Harry ventured, though he and Cedric already knew the answer.
The Sphinx dipped her great head slowly. "No."
She began to pace again, her golden coat shifting with each step, her claws pressing soft imprints into the earth with every stride.
"But hear my terms. Answer my riddle correctly—and I let you pass. Answer wrongly—and I attack. Refuse to answer at all—and you may leave. Unharmed."
Cedric blinked. That was far more generous than he'd imagined.
He had assumed the moment they engaged with her, there was no backing out—answer or fight. But a third option? Walk away freely if you simply don't answer?
That changed things considerably.
They could hear the riddle first. If it was too difficult, they'd simply turn around and take another path. They still had enough of a lead to afford that risk.
And they had Sherlock.
If Sherlock couldn't solve it, no one from Beauxbatons or Durmstrang stood a chance either.
Cedric felt quietly, unreservedly confident. And from the slight tilt of Sherlock's chin—that small, decisive nod—it was clear he felt no differently.
"Ask your riddle," Sherlock said.
The Sphinx stopped her pacing.
Her long, narrow eyes fixed on Sherlock with predatory precision. Slowly, she lowered herself onto her haunches, her vast body settling into a position that completely sealed the corridor—no way around her now, not from any angle.
Then, in that low, rasping voice, she spoke:
"First, think of what stands always at the front—the crown from which all things begin. Then tell me: what is the starting point of all that runs and never stops? The call of roads. The strictness of restraint. Last—in the blind spot of existence, the white crystal within the jar: the body of the dead made immortal. Now join them all together, and answer me—what is the creature you least wish to see?"
The moment the riddle ended, Harry and Cedric stood as though Petrified.
Neither of them had an answer. Not even close.
Harry hadn't even caught every word—only scattered fragments stuck in his memory. The final line, the creature you least wish to see, had come through clearly enough. But the range of possibilities that opened up was enormous.
The first thing that came to mind was the Blast-Ended Skrewt. Then—swarms of Billywigs, the grotesque eight-eyed spider, the ear-splitting Nogtail, dragons, frenzied Red Caps…
All creatures he desperately wished never to encounter again.
But none of them felt like the answer. A Sphinx's riddle would have a precise, elegant logic threading through every line. Harry could feel it—he just couldn't see it.
Cedric was faring no better. His brow was deeply furrowed, lips moving silently as he repeated phrases from the riddle to himself, searching for any thread to pull. The more he tried to connect the fragments, the more tangled they became.
When the Sphinx had finished speaking, her piercing gaze had drifted from Sherlock to take in Harry and Cedric—their expressions blank, their eyes slightly glazed with confusion.
The corner of her mouth curved, just slightly.
"Your companions seem lost," she said, with a note of something almost like indulgence. "Shall I repeat it?"
This friendly?
Harry and Cedric stared at each other, both visibly startled.
"You'd do that?" Harry asked before he could stop himself. He hadn't caught a few parts—a second hearing might be exactly what he needed.
The Sphinx gave Harry a playful wink. Her smile deepened and then, to both their astonishment, she began to recite the riddle again, her voice deliberately slowed, each syllable enunciated with crisp clarity so they could commit every word to memory.
She had just reached the line—the call of roads—
"That won't be necessary."
A pair of grey eyes settled calmly on the Sphinx. Harry and Cedric turned to stare, their jaws very nearly hitting the ground.
"The answer," Sherlock said, clearly and without hesitation, "is a Thestral."
The Sphinx's voice cut off.
For a brief moment—just a flicker—something crossed her imperious face. Surprise. Real surprise.
Then it shifted into something harder to name. A near-reverential appreciation. That expression softened into a warm, genuine smile, and the aura of threat that had surrounded her seemed to dissolve entirely.
She bowed.
With extraordinary grace, the enormous creature lowered her lion's body, her front legs bending—a movement that recalled a palace guardian paying tribute to a worthy visitor. Then she rose, and stepped aside, her vast form clearing the corridor completely, revealing the path that stretched away into the heart of the maze.
Harry and Cedric were, quite simply, stunned.
How long had that taken?
Less than a minute. The Sphinx hadn't even finished reciting the riddle a second time before Sherlock had cut her off.
They had barely managed to memorize the first half of the riddle.
Both of them knew Sherlock was exceptional—they had known it for some time. But in this moment, they felt it in a way that went beyond knowing. It was less like admiration and more like staring up at a mountain from the base. Sherlock didn't occupy the same dimension of thought that they did.
Cedric, in particular, felt a hot flush of embarrassment at his own earlier confidence.
He had actually had the thought of Sherlock failing to solve a riddle. The absurdity of it struck him now like a slap.
He fell in step behind Sherlock without a word. They walked in silence for a stretch, and when Harry finally surfaced from his daze, he spoke.
"Sherlock—how? How did you work that out so fast?"
"It's a straightforward letter-phrase construction," Sherlock replied, in a tone that managed to sound neither boastful nor modest—simply matter-of-fact. Which, somehow, made it feel slightly more boastful.
"I have absolutely no idea what that means," Harry said plainly.
"Neither do I," Cedric agreed at once.
Sherlock smiled faintly and nodded ahead. "Are you certain you want me to explain right now?"
Both of them followed his gaze—and stopped breathing.
Light.
Real light this time. Not the false, flickering lure of a Hinkypunk. Because they could see it with perfect clarity: the Triwizard Cup, no more than a hundred meters away, resting on its plinth, radiating that brilliant, golden glow.
In that instant, Harry and Cedric's minds went somewhere else entirely.
They both imagined walking out of the maze—Cup in hand—the roar of the crowd rising around them like a wave.
Harry saw Cho Chang and Ginny in the crowd. Their faces were luminous with admiration, clearer and more vivid than he'd ever pictured them before. Cho was running toward him, arms open wide, her expression fierce with warmth. Then Ginny too—
The gap between them closed. And kept closing.
He could smell Cho's perfume—
Cho tilted her face up toward his, eyes falling shut—
And Ginny, just beside—
Snap.
Harry jolted back to reality. Cho's shy, half-lidded expression vanished; in its place was the dim corridor and Cedric's face—wearing, of all things, an expression of sudden, wide-eyed clarity, as though he'd just woken from a dream mid-step.
Snap.
The sound again. Sherlock, clicking his fingers.
Both of them turned to look at him.
He was watching his two teammates with an expression of quiet, curious amusement.
The moment they'd seen the Cup, they'd both drifted into a reverie. The impact of it on them was evidently profound.
Harry in particular—flushed cheeks and ragged breathing. It wasn't difficult to guess where his thoughts had gone.
"Apologies for the interruption," Sherlock said, "but I suspect we'd be better served actually retrieving it first."
"Right—yes, of course!" Cedric laughed, a little sheepishly, the smile returning to his face.
Harry cleared his throat and nodded—though, privately, what a dream that had been.
Together, the three of them approached the gleaming trophy.
Cedric reached out instinctively—then stopped, hand hovering just short of it.
"What's wrong?" Harry asked, puzzled.
Cedric shook his head. "You take it, Sherlock."
"You're the captain selected by the Goblet of Fire," Sherlock replied lightly. "I don't think the Cup makes mistakes about things like that."
"Take it," Cedric said, with quiet firmness. "You've earned it. You were the one who told me about the dragons. You devised the Summoning Charm strategy for the first task. You decoded the golden egg. You and Harry rescued me in the lake." He paused. "And you just solved the riddle. Go on."
He glanced at Harry. "Or Harry. Either of you. I'm not touching it."
"Does it matter?" Harry asked, genuinely puzzled. "It's a team competition—whoever picks it up, we all win."
Sherlock smiled.
Cedric cared about ceremony more than Sherlock had expected. Far more.
"All right."
Sherlock wasn't the type to argue over symbolic gestures—and he wasn't about to suggest something as theatrical as all three of them grabbing it at once. He was not, and had never been, sentimental about that sort of thing.
Cedric had made his choice. Sherlock reached out and closed his hand around one of the gleaming handles of the Triwizard Cup.
And then—everything changed.
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