The moment he saw the red sparks shoot into the sky, Alastor Moody was already moving toward the maze entrance.
He found Rubeus Hagrid there, which was no surprise. What was surprising were the two students standing quite openly beside the temporary medical tent — a girl with a Gryffindor lion embroidered on her uniform and a boy in a silver-green Slytherin tie.
Hermione Granger and Draco Malfoy.
Two students whose styles were about as compatible as a Hippogriff and a garden gnome — including, notably, his impressive study partner in Defence Against the Dark Arts — were murmuring to each other beside the tent, showing no signs of going anywhere.
Something unusual was happening here.
Where had Sirius and Minerva gone? Why weren't they at the assembly point? Moody wondered, his magical eye sweeping the area.
He fixed both students with a look that had made hardened Aurors uncomfortable. "You two! What are you doing here? Why aren't you in the stands?"
"Professor Moody, Sirius Black told us to wait here," Draco said, meeting his gaze without blinking.
He was still faintly unsettled by Moody's scarred face — an old, involuntary reaction he hadn't fully shaken, even knowing that the Moody before him now was not the one who had used the Imperius Curse on him in another life. That had almost certainly been Barty Crouch Jr. But Draco's spine did not entirely agree with what his mind knew. He lied without hesitation.
In truth, Professor McGonagall's standing instructions were clear: Draco and Hermione should have gone back to the stands long ago. Fortunately, in the shock and bustle of McGonagall racing off to find Dumbledore, she had simply forgotten to enforce it.
The young couple had shamelessly stayed put.
Is there a better vantage point in this entire arena? Draco thought to himself, unrepentantly. A front-row seat to every update from the maze — he was not giving that up.
"Is that so?" Moody's magical eye rotated in its socket, raking Draco's expression for signs of concealed mischief.
"Hagrid—" Hermione turned to the half-giant, her voice earnest. "Sirius has found out that Mr. Bagman is a Death Eater in disguise. He's been attacking champions inside the maze and may even have interfered with the Goblet of Fire. Sirius has gone in to rescue the champions and stop the threat. He told us to wait outside — but I think he'll need help. He needs rescuers inside the maze as quickly as possible."
She held Hagrid's worried gaze. "You can check with Professor McGonagall — she knows all of this."
The moment you invoked Professor McGonagall's name, almost no one questioned you further. Her stern, unimpeachable persona functioned like a force field.
Who would dare misuse Professor McGonagall's authority for personal gain? Draco thought, glancing at Hermione with a flicker of pure, startled admiration.
Almost no one. Except that particular little Gryffindor.
"Ah — right, in that case—" Hagrid scratched his head. "Professor McGonagall — where is she now?"
"At the referee's box—" Hermione pointed. "Updating Professor Dumbledore and requesting a suspension of the match."
Hagrid squinted into the distance and, sure enough, spotted McGonagall's slight figure moving urgently among the officials. He scratched his beard, shrugged, and decided not to make things more difficult for them.
Draco couldn't help it — he turned and raised an eyebrow at his girlfriend.
Hermione had a gift for surprising him when he least expected it.
When exactly had the rule-abiding, strictly-by-the-book girl started lying? And with such fluency — one could almost say she had a talent for it.
"Right then, Alastor — shall we go in and help?" Hagrid glanced up at the red sparks.
"That's precisely what we're here for." Moody waved them off gruffly. "You two — stay here. Wait for Sirius. Don't wander."
They watched Moody and Hagrid step through the hedge entrance one after the other and disappear.
Draco cast a quiet "Muffliato" and smiled at Hermione. "Well, then. I had no idea you were a more accomplished liar than me. I'll concede the point."
"It wasn't entirely a lie." Hermione gave him a crafty smile. She could hear the genuine admiration in his voice, and she stood a little taller for it. "Everything I said was technically true. Bagman really is a Death Eater in disguise, and he really is in the maze. Sirius genuinely told us to stay outside. And Professor McGonagall does know all of it — even if she might not approve of how I presented it."
"Sirius told us to stay outside the maze," Draco said slowly, "not to stay outside the maze and away from the stands. He didn't specify."
Hermione's smile widened. She looked at the shadowy entrance to the maze and said, a little playfully, "You started it. I just followed your lead."
In truth, she wasn't entirely sure why she'd said what she said. Initially she'd wanted to speak up for him — out of some mixture of genuine concern and a flash of resentment at the reflexive suspicion always directed at him. She had been tired of it. And Professor Moody's scarred face carried too many unpleasant memories; she could not stomach watching him make things difficult for Draco. Not even slightly.
"A perfect game of truth and misdirection," Draco said, watching her. "I'm told I taught you that. You've clearly surpassed the teacher."
"You told me once it was the ideal test of a quick mind," Hermione said, her cheeks faintly pink. "I had a very good instructor. And I think I managed rather well."
"You managed brilliantly." He couldn't help the soft laugh that escaped him. He loved these unpredictable flashes of cunning in her. "They say the cleverer a person is, the more naturally deception comes to them," he said, teasing. "I suppose I shouldn't underestimate you."
"And I shouldn't underestimate you either — you most contrary Slytherin in history." She lifted her chin at him with feigned superiority. "Handing that map over to Sirius — some people claim you're relentlessly selfish, you know. I wonder what they'd make of that."
"There are always exceptions," he said, avoiding her gaze. A faint colour rose along his cheekbones, and he looked away, his voice dropping. "Leave it."
---
While the young couple lingered at the labyrinth entrance — misappropriating one man's instructions, invoking another's authority, and calling it all entirely accurate — the man Fleur had called the bravest Gryffindor was moving quietly through the dark hedges.
Sirius checked the Marauder's Map again. His name was drawing closer to Harry's — nearly within reach.
He raised his wand, letting a thin beam of light guide him, and began calling Harry's name.
No response.
He looked up. Directly ahead: a solid wall of hedge, towering and impenetrable.
Harry was on the other side. He must be.
Sirius vented his frustration on the hedge with several blasting curses. Branches tore apart and immediately regrew. No gap. No opening.
By the time he doubled back and found another route, Harry's dot had already wandered elsewhere.
He had no luck on the new path either. Instead, he expended considerable effort Stunning a Manticore that had been lurking in the shadows and spent several unnecessary minutes questioning Hagrid's understanding of "appropriate creature difficulty."
A Manticore. In a school competition. Its sting was instantly lethal; its hide repelled nearly every curse known to the Ministry.
If one of the champions were to stumble across that thing — Sirius thought darkly. He would have been better off leaving Hagrid a colony of Blast-Ended Skrewts to muddy the paths. Had Hagrid confused the Manticore with the griffin that guards treasure? He turned the question over and tried very hard to stop thinking about whether the protective spells he'd cast on Fleur were sufficient.
Not long after, he stopped at a three-way junction.
According to the Marauder's Map, the three paths before him each led toward a different objective: Harry; the Goblet of Fire; and the Death Eater, McNeil.
Sirius stood in thought.
Going after Harry had seemed the obvious priority from the start, and it had consumed him ever since he'd entered the maze. But he could no longer ignore a simple truth: precisely locating a constantly moving person inside a magically reinforced labyrinth was a near-impossible task.
Harry moved like a Niffler chasing Galleons — restless, unpredictable, never still. At several points, Sirius had come within metres of him only to be blocked by hedges, and by the time he found a way through, Harry had moved on again.
Should he go to the Goblet of Fire instead? Sirius pursed his lips. Unlike Harry, the Goblet could not wander. It was considerably more catchable.
Hermione had warned him that McNeil had accessed it, and it might now be unsafe — cursed, or worse, transfigured into a Portkey. If a champion reached it unsuspecting, the results could be catastrophic. Perhaps the smarter move was to neutralise the threat at its source.
But if he abandoned the search for Harry to secure the Goblet, Harry might walk straight into McNeil at any moment.
"For that matter," Sirius muttered to himself, "how much does it actually matter whether Dumbledore's protective charm held?"
Perhaps McNeil had realised he couldn't touch the Goblet directly and had resorted to this instead — blundering into the maze during the tournament, attacking champions wholesale like a rabid Crup. Whatever his plan, he certainly wasn't showing much restraint.
Fleur's injuries, at least, had not been fatal — but Sirius could not afford to be complacent. There was no knowing if McNeil might decide, at any moment, to stop pulling his punches.
And if McNeil found Harry first — what then? Attack? Torture? Kill?
If Sirius subdued McNeil first, Harry would be that much safer — at least no one would be hunting him through the hedges — and the other champions would have some additional protection as well.
But with the Goblet in an uncertain state, any champion could reach it first and trigger whatever had been done to it.
What to do? Sirius stood at the junction, caught in a genuinely difficult decision.
And then the decision was taken from him. A shout came from the right-hand path — thick with a Bulgarian accent Sirius recognised clearly from that morning's meeting room. "What exactly are you trying to do, Mr. Bagman?!"
Death Eaters attacking Krum. Sirius had heard it; he couldn't pretend otherwise.
He moved immediately, taking the right-hand path at a run and extinguishing his wand with a quiet "Nox" as he slowed his approach.
A few moments more and the sounds became distinct — a red flash, the sharp crack of a curse, a muffled grunt. Then silence. Only one person remained upright on the path ahead, hooded, bending over a dark shape on the ground.
That was not Krum. Durmstrang uniform did not include a hood.
Sirius's expression settled into something cold and unhurried. The thin moonlight fell across his face through gaps in the hedge — a dangerous, focused stillness.
He moved his wand without a sound. The hooded figure dropped.
Sirius walked forward at an easy pace, the ropes from the tip of his wand already uncoiling as he went. By the time he reached the fallen figure, it was bound hand and foot, neat as a parcel.
He nudged it over with his boot. Bagman's unconscious face looked up at him — borrowed, like a mask. Sirius knew the Death Eater beneath it. He felt for and pocketed the dropped wand, then turned to check on Krum.
Krum was unconscious, worse off than Fleur. Whether he'd fought McNeil for several rounds or had already encountered something dangerous in the maze beforehand, his body bore several wounds, and his expression, even in sleep, was strained with pain.
Sirius pressed Krum's wand firmly back into his hand, cast "Protego Totalum" over him, and launched red sparks skyward.
No point waking him, Sirius thought. Krum would want to continue — and Sirius was not nobly inclined to administer a reviving kiss as he had been with Fleur. The parallel was not lost on him.
"Right. With McNeil dealt with," Sirius said crisply, wrestling his thoughts into order, "Harry's no longer being actively hunted inside this maze. All I need to do is find the Goblet of Fire first, and we can wait for the champions to come to us."
He backtracked to the three-way junction and took the middle path without hesitation. Based on the map, it pointed toward the centre.
He walked in silence, the hedges pressing close on both sides.
"Merlin, please let there be nothing worse waiting around that corner," Sirius prayed under his breath. He had a dark feeling Hagrid had also sourced something along the lines of a venomous something-or-other.
Even accounting for the extravagances of the Triwizard Tournament, some of those choices were frankly excessive.
The path was growing familiar.
He was close — he was sure of it. The centre of the maze. The Goblet of Fire should be at the end of this passage. He checked the map one final time: Harry was slightly to the left, still a short distance from the centre.
Beside Harry's dot — "Cedric Diggory." The two names were moving together.
"Making friends in the middle of the final, are we? Harry, that's entirely James..." Sirius muttered, something easing in his chest.
He allowed himself one moment of cautious optimism. The situation had largely stabilised: McNeil was bound and immobilised; the Goblet was just ahead; Harry and Cedric were moving together, apparently unharmed. Sirius could check the Goblet, verify it was untampered, and simply wait for Harry to wander in.
He strode on, drawing closer to the centre of the maze.
At the end of the path, where the Goblet of Fire should have stood, he stopped.
The space was empty.
No blue-white flame. No rough-carved wooden goblet. Not even the marble plinth.
Only a thick stone pillar, unremarkable, standing where nothing had stood that morning.
Sirius frowned. He had been here when Dumbledore placed the Goblet. There had been no stone pillar.
A cold feeling moved through him. Something had gone wrong — something he didn't yet understand — and whatever it was, it was not good.
He should have woken McNeil. He should have taken the time to pry something useful from that wretched man before moving on. But at the time, he had been in a hurry, and haste had cost him information.
He had assumed that as long as the champions didn't touch the Goblet, the Portkey wouldn't activate. But if the Goblet had been moved — if something else had been put in its place—
He checked the map immediately. Harry and Cedric were still in the maze. Their dots were moving together, quickly, toward the southwest corner.
They were all right. For now. Sirius breathed again.
What are they running from? Some sort of creature? A Sphinx? He stared at the stone pillar.
He tapped it with his wand. A hollow sound.
Not a pillar at all.
"Reducto!" The stone shattered. And there, revealed in the wreckage, was the rough-carved wooden goblet. The blue-white flame danced within it, exactly as it should.
The real Goblet of Fire.
Hidden, not moved. Simple misdirection.
The blue-white flame of the Goblet filled the small space with shifting light and illuminated two pairs of eyes.
Pale grey and emerald green. Both alight with longing.
"Take it," Harry said quietly, standing behind Cedric. "You got here first."
Cedric didn't move.
He looked at the trophy, then back at Harry.
"You take it," Cedric said. "You deserve to win. You saved me."
"That's not how the rules work," Harry said, an edge of exasperation in his voice. "Whoever reaches it first, scores. You got here first."
Cedric took two steps back, putting more distance between himself and the Goblet, and stood beside Harry.
"No," he said.
"Stop being noble and just take it!" Harry glared at him. "Let's get out of here."
Cedric turned and looked at the youngest champion. "You told me about the dragon," he said quietly. "Without that warning, I would have been eliminated in the first task."
"And you told me the secret of the golden egg. We're even," Harry said shortly.
"You should have scored higher in the second task," Cedric pressed. "You went back for all the hostages. I should have done the same."
"I was the only idiot who took the song literally," Harry said. "Cedric. Take the trophy."
"No," Cedric said — and meant it.
Harry turned and stared at him. Cedric met his gaze steadily, and his expression was entirely serious.
In that moment, Harry saw it — the plain, unperformative sincerity of a Hufflepuff who actually meant what he said.
"Are you out of your mind?" Harry said. "I heard your father this morning. He told the whole meeting room you're going to win Hufflepuff a trophy they haven't had in centuries."
"And your friends?" Cedric's expression didn't waver. He said it with some effort, as though it cost him something. "Don't they deserve this? Don't you care about Gryffindor's honour?"
He crossed his arms and looked away from Harry, fixing his eyes on the flame.
"I believe this is the right thing to do," he said — stubbornly, and with difficulty.
Harry swallowed. He turned and looked at the gleam on the trophy.
He could almost picture himself carrying it out of the maze. His godfather at the entrance, laughing, bursting with pride. The whole stadium on its feet — the noise of it, the warmth of it. His friends running down to meet him, demanding to know which spells had worked, wrapping him in clumsy hugs.
The Weasleys. Fred and George probably setting off a firework in the shape of a dragon. That vivid patch of orange-red hair, standing out against black robes, just the way it had looked at midday, impossibly bright.
Harry smiled, feeling something tight in his throat and his stomach.
He turned and looked at Cedric's stubborn profile in the dim light.
Cedric said it was the right thing to do. But what was the right thing?
Harry exhaled and made up his mind.
"Cedric. Let's go together."
"What?"
"Two winners. Hogwarts still wins either way," Harry said. "We tie for first place."
Cedric looked at him sharply and uncrossed his arms. "You — you actually mean that?"
"Of course." Harry held his gaze. "We helped each other through every task, didn't we? We got here together. So let's finish it together."
Cedric was quiet for a moment.
Then he smiled — genuinely, without reservation.
"All right," he said. "I'm with you."
They walked toward the trophy side by side, each reaching out a hand toward one of its gleaming handles.
"Count of three?" Harry said. "One — two — three—"
They each seized a handle.
The Goblet of Fire activated. Neither champion could release their grip. The trophy spun and blazed, lifting them from the ground, and they were hurled forward through a rush of wind and colour.
---
Deep inside the maze, Sirius Black watched the names "Harry Potter" and "Cedric Diggory" vanish from the Marauder's Map.
He stared at the Goblet of Fire in front of him — the real Goblet of Fire, still sitting placidly in the rubble of its stone disguise.
It looked back at him, blankly, without apology.
Sirius stood very still as the understanding settled over him.
McNeil had never touched the Goblet. He had never dared to touch something Dumbledore himself had enchanted. He hadn't needed to.
He had simply hidden it. Concealed it inside a hollow stone pillar. And then — somewhere southwest, somewhere in the maze — he had created a second object. Something that looked enough like the Goblet to fool two champions sprinting toward the end of a gruelling competition. Something he had transfigured into a Portkey.
Sirius had almost reached them in time.
"McNeil, you cunning, wretched—" He stopped, forcing himself to think instead of rage.
Where were Harry and Cedric now? Little Hangleton? Somewhere else entirely? With Barty Crouch Jr.'s information exposed and Voldemort's plans disrupted, there was every chance the destination had been changed. Perhaps Voldemort had learned more through Bertha Jorkins. Perhaps the whole scheme had been revised. Every Order member who had kept watch near that graveyard for days — all of it potentially moot.
Sirius looked back at the sky. The red sparks from Fleur's position had gone dark — Alastor and the others had reached her. Krum's sparks were still burning, which meant McNeil hadn't been dragged out of the maze yet.
Sirius gritted his teeth.
He left the Goblet where it stood without looking back.
He ran.
Before Alastor and the others reached Krum's position, he had to get to McNeil — by whatever means necessary, the Imperius Curse or the Cruciatus Curse, he didn't much care — and force that lying, treacherous Death Eater to tell him exactly what he'd done, where Harry and Cedric had been sent, and what Voldemort was planning.