The morning of the final task was clear and cool, with the specific quality of light that arrives on days when things get decided.
Mrs. Weasley was there with Bill, early, already settled in the stands. Sirius had spent most of the year moving through Hogwarts in his Animagus form — appearing at intervals, slipping away before he could be officially accounted for. Today he was in human form in the stands, drawing handshakes and recognition from wizards who remembered the name and the story. He stood with Harry before the task for a few minutes, and whatever they said to each other was brief and not about spells.
The champions and the three headmasters walked out together to the open ground in front of the maze.
Dumbledore took the podium.
"The third and final task of the Triwizard Tournament."
He gestured at the walls ahead — Quidditch-pitch dimensions on the outside, Undetectable Extension Charm making the interior something considerably larger.
"Professor Moody has placed the Triwizard Cup at the centre of the maze. Navigate through. The first champion to take it wins."
He stepped down and drew Kevin aside.
"No climbing the hedges," he said, with the patient certainty of a man who has rehearsed this sentence.
Kevin shut his mouth and settled for looking deeply dissatisfied.
They took their starting positions. Kevin and Harry in the centre two entrances — their combined scores putting them first. Krum and Fleur offset to either side, waiting for their delayed start.
"Once you're in," Kevin said to Harry quietly, "go right."
Harry frowned. "You've mapped the layout?"
"No. I just don't want my spells hitting you from that direction."
Harry stared at him.
Dumbledore called: "Champions — go!"
They went.
Kevin moved into the fog and was immediately invisible in it. Harry took the first right.
Fake Moody limped to Harry's shoulder at the entrance and pointed left with his cane — subtle, a small shift of weight, the kind of thing that looked like an old man adjusting his balance.
Harry hesitated.
Kevin had said right. Moody was suggesting left.
He came to the first fork and started left.
Ahead and above, on the left side of the maze, a pillar of dark red fire exploded upward. Twenty metres high, visible over the hedge walls from the stands outside.
The crowd noise cut off sharply. Then resumed, louder.
Students were on their feet. Hermione had both hands on the railing.
The fire pillar twisted and compressed and extended into a blade of flame, blazing and enormous.
Kevin's voice rolled out of the maze like distant weather.
"EX Excalibur!"
The flaming sword came down.
The impact shook the stands. A cloud of debris rose from the general left section of the maze. From outside, a stretch of hedge shuddered.
Krum and Fleur, standing at their delayed entrances, exchanged a look and made no immediate move to enter.
Dumbledore, from his position on the exterior patrol, removed his hat, placed it against his face, and breathed through it.
A second pillar rose. A second EX Excalibur. Another impact.
Then, ten seconds of quiet, followed by a fire tornado — enormous, rotating slowly — rolling through the maze's left interior. Its upper edge swept above the hedge walls, visible to everyone outside.
It was moving the wrong direction. Away from the centre. Toward the left side.
The crowd assumed Kevin had lost his bearings entirely.
He was on the right side of the maze.
He'd been there since ten seconds in.
The fire pillars, the EX Excalibur, the tornado — all of it on the left. All of it noise and spectacle and a very clear answer to the question of where Kevin Croft was at any given moment.
He was moving in the opposite direction, blasting holes through walls with quiet sequential Confringos, each explosion small enough not to break above the hedge line, each one opening a gap he stepped through at a walk. He'd encountered three Acromantulas in the space of two minutes. One hit each with the crowbar. He stepped over them.
He rounded a final turn and saw the Triwizard Cup — blue-white glow on a stone pedestal, the fog thinner here, the light of it clean against the dark walls.
Kevin stopped.
He did not touch it.
He removed his left shoe. Reached inside the sock. The Seamless Extension Charm gave him the contents of a small packed bag, kept solid against the bottom of his foot — a change of clothes, one vial, nothing more. The rule against magical objects hadn't specified socks. The inspectors had checked his bag, his wand, and his pockets.
He changed quickly. Dark Muggle trench coat over a plain shirt, cut close enough to Moody's style to pass a casual glance. His school robes and Hermione's blue cloak went into the sock. He tucked it away.
He checked his watch.
He uncapped the vial and drank.
The transformation moved through him — face reshaping, height adjusting, the body's proportions shifting until the image in his mind showed someone else. Blond. Unremarkable. Carrying just the right quality of fatigue.
He looked at the Cup.
And waited.
---
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