The projection charms overhead locked onto all three lanes at once.
A single sharp tone rang across the arena.
The first task officially began.
The crowd leaned forward as one body. The sound in the stands changed immediately. It stopped being a conversation and became attention. Hundreds of people held breath, shifted on stone, tightened fingers around scarves, programmes, and seat edges. The arena itself seemed to narrow around the three champions.
The first obstacle in all three lanes was identical.
A low archway stood ten metres from the start line. Two curse triggers had been fitted into the stone, one on each side, both keyed to movement through the centre. Walk through without disabling them, and both would fire at once. Disable only one, and the remaining trigger would compensate and cast twice. It was not subtle. It was designed to punish haste and half-work.
Krum reached it first in the order of movement, though only because his lane began two paces closer to the inner curve. He did not hesitate. His eyes flicked once to the faint shimmer of the ward anchors. "Finite Incantatem." The first trigger died. His wrist turned. "Finite." The second died before the echo of the first spell finished, leaving his wand. He stepped through without slowing.
The Durmstrang section approved of speed. Their applause came in organised bursts, accompanied by a chant that sounded too rehearsed to be spontaneous.
Fleur reached the same obstacle a heartbeat later.
She did not target the triggers at all.
Her wand cut a narrow vertical line, and a thin ward strip flashed into existence between her body and the arch. She turned sideways, slipped through the gap with grace that looked like a dance, and the curse triggers spat their hexes harmlessly into the ward line. The spells dissolved before she was fully through.
The Beauxbatons stand erupted in French pride and relief.
Altair reached his arch last by order of position and first by result.
He did not stop to disable the triggers.
He read the field geometry once, altered his angle by less than a handspan, and walked straight through the centre at the exact point where neither trigger's actual effect overlap reached. Both spells fired behind him into empty air.
There was a beat of silence before the crowd understood what they had seen.
Then the noise came back twice as loud.
The Hogwarts side rose in patches. Durmstrang students reacted the way they reacted to every competent piece of work, by looking mildly offended that someone else had done it first. Fleur, already moving toward the second obstacle, spared Altair one fast sideways glance and then refocused. Krum did not look at all. He had already gone ahead to the next station.
The transfiguration puzzle waited fifty metres deeper into each lane.
This obstacle kept the same core problem across all three lanes while changing the visible objects. Six separate items rested on a raised platform beneath a card that gave the desired result. All six had to be incorporated into a single completed structure. Ninety seconds was the allowed time. Fail, and the platform resets while adding thirty seconds to the final total.
Krum reached it first and read the task card once.
A lantern that was the finished structure for his lane.
He worked in sequence, directly and economically. Metal formed the outer frame. Glass was drawn and thinned. The outer frame was reshaped for support. Hook on top, base on bottom, and lastly internal fuel chamber. He did not waste movement or overcomplicate anything. He simply built the required object one element at a time. It was good and clean work. He finished in seventy eight seconds and moved on at once.
Fleur's platform required a decorative standing candelabrum.
She spent ten full seconds reading the card and studying the six objects laid before her. That choice cost time and saved the task. Once she moved, she moved beautifully. Three pieces transformed together under a single rotation of her wrist, the spell controlled enough that the objects retained matching texture without a visible correction. She drew the next two into alignment, reshaped them in the same breath, then folded the final element into place with a precise charm adjustment that made the whole structure bloom upward rather than simply assemble.
She took fifty-one seconds in total.
The Beauxbatons teachers applauded before the students remembered to do the same.
Curtesy of Vinda, Altair's lane required an astrolabe. She was really hoping for one of the Rosiers.
He read the card while still closing the distance.
By the time he reached the platform, he had already solved the structure in his head. His wand moved once. Three objects blurred into half-finished forms. His wrist shifted. The remaining three snapped into alignment, reshaped, and locked together around the central axis in a way that would have earned approving silence in any serious mastery room.
Twenty-two seconds. Vinda scoffed as the referees recorded the time.
He was off the platform before Krum had fully pulled his lantern handle into shape.
The score projection above the arena updated the running times in pale gold numerals.
Fleur saw it as she sprinted to the next obstacle and felt a sharp flash of annoyance at the gap. Not panic, she was too focused for that. Annoyance was useful. It sharpened the next decision.
The restraint segment came next.
Each lane held a ward sphere around three metres across, suspended over a marked section of floor and rotating slowly in place. The task was simple in wording and deliberately cruel in execution. Move the sphere from one end of the marked section to the other without breaking it. Any direct force destabilised the shell. Every crack meant ten seconds added.
Krum attacked the problem first with strength.
The sphere answered by cracking in two places the moment his levitation pressure exceeded the tolerance field. He adjusted instantly, to his credit, abandoning brute control for a slower correction method. It worked, but the penalties remained. Thirty-four seconds of movement. Twenty seconds added.
Fleur built outward rather than inward.
A cushioning field wrapped the sphere before she touched it. The construct floated inside its own protective buffer, allowing her to guide it in small, measured shifts rather than commanding it outright. She finished it in twenty-six seconds.
Altair looked at the floor once, then transfigured it.
The marked section became a smooth gradient with almost imperceptible curvature. The sphere rolled along the incline under the gentlest guidance charm imaginable, drifting to the target point like it had chosen to cooperate out of self-respect.
Eighteen seconds.
The Hogwarts section of the stands began making the sort of noise that turned school pride into weather.
The combat crossing point waited at the three-quarter mark.
That was where the arena became honest.
The barriers between the three lanes dropped in unison, and the champions entered a single shared space forty metres wide and thirty long. They were allowed to delay each other. Not cripple. Not truly injure, only delay. That distinction mattered only to the people who had to write rules. To the champions, it meant one thing.
Do not break any rule, not under the watch of so many eyes.
Altair reached the crossing first by eleven seconds.
He read the approach angles while still moving. Krum would come straight and fast. Fleur would not. She was too good for straight lines when a better one existed. Altair built overlapping Repulsion fields across the right side of the merged space in six seconds, setting them at staggered height and force intervals to punish momentum rather than body mass. Then he turned left and kept going.
Fleur entered with a shield already half-formed.
He had read that correctly, too.
Altair did not cast at her directly. He sent a Binding hex into the floor two metres ahead of where her path would naturally tighten. The spell spread laterally in a fast, low sheet, not to hit her, but to erase her easiest options. Fleur changed angle immediately and lost four seconds doing it.
She also spared him a look that promised future correction.
Krum hit the first Repulsion field at full pace.
It flung him half a step off line. He forced his way through the second with sheer counter pressure, broke the third cleanly, and paid for it in time. Eight seconds gone, which in a crossing that short felt like robbery.
By the time Fleur regained her best line, Altair had already cleared the merge.
The final stretch held three gates.
The first two were keyed to specific spell signatures. That part did not trouble any of them. Krum forced the first with the right charm and clipped through the second a few breaths later. Fleur passed both with elegant efficiency. Altair crossed them almost lazily, at a pace that was beginning to irritate half the students present.
The third gate carried no visible trigger and no visible lock.
The card beside it held only two words.
Correct answer.
Altair stopped.
For the first time in the course, he truly stopped.
He placed one hand against the gate and read the ward architecture beneath the surface. The pattern was familiar. Second summer in the Nest. Three sessions under a senior Unspeakable on conditional ward logic and answer-bound structures. The gate did not want to be forced. It wanted recognition.
He identified the governing principle in nine seconds.
Then he cast one precise spell beside the gate, not against it, a demonstration of comprehension instead of assault.
The gate opened.
He crossed the finish line twelve seconds before Fleur reached the third gate. Krum was still clearing the second.
The board above the arena flared and updated.
First: Altair Black. Hogwarts.
Second: Fleur Delacour. Beauxbatons.
Third: Viktor Krum. Durmstrang.
The crowd reacted in layers.
Hogwarts exploded first. Slytherin approval came sharp and vicious. Ravenclaw cheered the transfiguration sequence and pretended that it made them superior to everyone else. Gryffindor's enthusiasm was noisier and less selective. Durmstrang accepted Krum's third place with visible offence. The Beauxbatons section rose for Fleur with real pride, because second behind Altair Black in a task built like that was not humiliation. It was simply bad timing married to impossible competition.
Altair looked once at the board and then to the stands. He was looking for the Heir of his house. Corvus's gaze clashed with his and nodded with satisfaction.
Fleur composed herself at the finish line, breathing under control, jaw set, eyes cool. Altair accepted his confirmed score from the judge with a slight bow and walked out as if winning had been one administrative step among several.
Corvus watched the board in silence.
That silence carried more approval than applause would have.
--
The tone rang again, and the projection charms shifted toward the adjacent court, where the Quidditch pitch was being opened for the first match of the day.
There was a break of a little over two hours before brooms rose.
That should have been enough time for the student population to eat like sensible creatures; some did. Most did not.
The prospect of watching Viktor Krum play from sixty feet away had a particular effect on adolescent judgment. The Durmstrang section had already begun warming itself into organised noise before either team appeared over the grass.
When the teams finally entered the pitch, the crowd rewarded them properly.
Hogwarts wore black and silver.
Captain Octavia Fawley led them out, lean and sharp-eyed, already scanning wind direction before she touched her broom. Beside her came Chasers Imogen Vane and Lucas Merrythought, both sixth years and both experienced enough to know that Durmstrang would try to make the first ten minutes feel like a warning. Beaters Fred and George Weasley took position with identical grins and the kind of ease that usually meant someone else was about to regret something. Keeper Hector Flint checked the hoops twice before mounting. Seeker Adrian Bowen, a fifth year with excellent reflexes and the mildly haunted face common to young players told they were about to chase Viktor Krum.
Durmstrang wore deep crimson.
Their captain, Stoyan Petrov, carried himself like a military officer who had accidentally accepted a Quaffle instead of a command post. His fellow Chasers, Mila Dragunova and Sergei Antonov, flew with the rigid cohesion of players who had practised offensive patterns until they no longer needed speech. The Beaters, Yelena Markov and Pavel Ilyin, looked built by a committee dedicated to making Bludgers more personal. Their Keeper, Lev Orlov, was broad enough that the middle hoop was not visible. Krum took the highest line without flourish, already separate from the rest by instinct.
Madam Hooch hovered between the lines in yellow-eyed command, whistle already between her fingers and expression set in the particular severity of a flying instructor who trusted nobody with a broom if she could help it.
For one brief moment, the two teams hovered opposite each other in the November cold, breath visible, broom handles steady, all fourteen players suspended between discipline and impact.
Then Madam Hooch's whistle cut through the air.
The Quaffle rose.
Durmstrang scored before Hogwarts properly touched it.
Petrov caught the throw off and drove straight at the hoops with the kind of confidence that forced a keeper to declare too early. Hector Flint committed to the obvious lane. Petrov was released at the last possible instant. Dragunova took the pass one-handed and put the Quaffle through the open hoop without any unnecessary celebration.
The Durmstrang stands approved with practised chanting that sounded only slightly more civil than a border mobilisation.
The Hogwarts section answered with boos so immediate they had probably been waiting under the tongue all morning.
The reset favoured local knowledge.
Octavia Fawley took the next carry and climbed hard into the western draft, a current peculiar to the Hogwarts pitch that always lifted late and punished visitors who treated it as simple wind. She let the upward pull sharpen her angle, cut across Orlov's eyeline, faked low, and sent the Quaffle high through the right hoop while the Durmstrang Keeper committed wrong.
Ten all.
That settled the pitch.
For the next twenty minutes, the match remained close and increasingly rude.
Durmstrang's Beaters hit with force that made spectators wince on instinct. Markov sent one Bludger screaming at Lucas Merrythought's ribs hard enough that only Fred Weasley's last-second interception kept the Chaser on his broom. Fred met the iron ball with a crack that echoed across the pitch and sent it back low and vicious toward Antonov's knees. Antonov twisted away just in time, lost his line, and spilt the Quaffle straight into Vane's waiting hands.
George followed the play without wasting the chance. His bat flashed once, then again, sending the second Bludger into Petrov's path at exactly the moment the Durmstrang captain tried to cut across the centre lane. Petrov avoided the first strike, saw the second too late, and had to throw himself almost flat along his broom to keep from taking it in the ribs. The move saved him from injury and cost him control. The Quaffle dropped. Flint caught the rebound and restarted Hogwarts immediately.
Durmstrang answered with the kind of physicality that made school sport look one bad temper away from formal war. Ilyin drove a Bludger at Fawley's shoulder. George reached it first and turned it upward, spoiling the angle. Fred, who had already moved ahead of the play because he was incapable of respecting ordinary sequencing, struck the other Bludger across Markov's line of sight. Markov ducked late, clipped the ball with her shoulder, and spun half a turn off balance. The Hogwarts stands responded as if one of the twins had personally invented tactical violence.
That was the difference in the air. Durmstrang's Beaters were stronger. The Weasley twins were worse in the way that mattered. They hunted for timing, for nuisance, for the exact second when a player looked away to do something important. Twice, they forced Antonov wide. Once, they nearly took Dragunova's broom tail clean off its line and left her cursing in Bulgarian while Vane slipped past to score through the left hoop.
Antonov answered three minutes later with a brutal straight drive that nearly clipped Flint's shoulder on the way through.
Fawley scored again off a tight inside pass after George sent a Bludger so close to Orlov's head that the Keeper had to blink at exactly the wrong moment.
Dragunova restored the lead before the applause ended, using the confusion from a failed double feint by Merrythought and Vane to cut through the centre with merciless efficiency.
At the half-hour mark, the board showed sixty to fifty.
Durmstrang ahead.
Not comfortably.
Harry watched from the stands with a hard concentration to understand what the score did not yet show. Hogwarts was surviving. They were not controlling. Durmstrang had more discipline in the air and more patience in their formation work. If the Snitch appeared at the wrong moment, the score gap would not matter. If it appeared at the right moment, the whole match might still turn.
Then Krum changed posture.
Until then, he had spent the game high above the pitch in the infuriatingly patient manner of a professional who knew better than to waste effort performing for children. He watched, adjusted and conserved. Bowen kept him in sight and did a reasonable imitation of calm.
The moment Krum's head dropped, and his broom tipped into a dive, half the pitch understood one second later.
The Durmstrang stands came to their feet as one.
Bowen drove after him.
Half a second behind.
Against most seekers, that would have been workable.
Against Krum, it was educational.
Forty feet from the ground, Krum rolled ninety degrees without bleeding speed, his body nearly horizontal to the grass. Bowen matched, but matching cost him distance. Krum rolled back, dipped lower, then used the recovery to change angle by a margin small enough to look accidental and large enough to win.
The Snitch hovered near the eastern goal post, no more than twelve feet above the turf, still enough to look vulnerable.
Krum levelled at the last possible moment.
His broom skimmed the grass for two metres.
His right hand closed.
The whistle blew.
Two hundred and ten to fifty.
The Durmstrang section ceased being an audience and became a roar. One student climbed onto his bench. Another followed. A prefect pushed through the row with the face of a woman who knew perfectly well she was about to lose a disciplinary battle against a group of delighted idiots.
On the pitch, Bowen sat on his broom near the boundary line and stared at the place where Krum had just passed. He did not look devastated. He looked like a student receiving a lesson too expensive to forget.
Harry noticed that and wondered if he would have time to try his chances on the pitch.
There were still two matches left in the bracket, and the points table had not closed. The day belonged to Altair and Krum for now, but not all tournaments were won by the first shout of the crowd.