Change the Future

GOF 23

"Whys it so easy" Someone shouted.

Then he heard movement right behind him. He held out his wand, ready to attack, but its beam fell only upon Cedric, who had just hurried out of a path on the right-and side. Cedric looked severely shaken. The sleeve of his robe was smoking.

"Hagrid's Blast-Ended Skrewts!" he hissed. "They're enormous - I only just got away!" He shook his head and dived out of sight, along another path. Keen to put plenty of distance between himself and the skrewts, Harry hurried off again. Then, as he turned a corner, he saw a dementor gliding toward him. It advanced, sensing its way blindly toward him. Harry raised his wand, and cried

"Expecto Patronum!" A silver stag erupted from the end of Harry's wand and galloped toward the dementor, which fell back and tripped over the hem of its robes. Harry had never seen a dementor stumble. "Hang on!" he shouted, advancing in the wake of his silver Patronus, "You're a boggart! Riddikulus!" There was a loud crack, and the shape-shifter exploded in a wisp of smoke. The silver stag faded from sight. Harry moved on, quickly and quietly as possible, listening hard, his wand held high once more. Left... right... left again... Twice he found himself facing dead ends. He did the Four-Point Spell again and found that he was going too far east. He turned back, took a right turn, and saw an odd golden mist floating ahead of him. Harry approached it cautiously, pointing the wand's beam at it. "Reducio!" he said. The spell shot straight through the mist, leaving it intact. He was hesitating when a scream shattered the silence. "Fleur?" Harry yelled. There was silence. He stared all around him. Her scream seemed to have come from somewhere ahead. He took a deep breath and ran through the enchanted mist. The world turned upside down. Harry was hanging from the ground, with his hair on end, his glasses dangling off his nose, threatening to fall into the bottomless sky. He clutched them to the end of his nose and hung there, terrified. Below him the dark, star-spangled heavens stretched endlessly. He shut his eyes, so he wouldn't be able to see the view of endless space below him, and pulled his right foot as hard as he could away from the grassy ceiling. Immediately, the world righted itself. Harry fell forward onto his knees onto the ground. He took a deep, steadying breath, then got up again and hurried forward, looking back over his shoulder as he ran away from the golden mist, which twinkled innocently at him in the moonlight. 

He paused at a junction of two paths and looked around. The cup was somewhere close by, and it sounded as though Fleur was no longer in the running. He met nothing for ten minutes, but kept running into dead ends. Twice he took the same wrong turning. Finally, he found a new route and started to jog along it, his wand light waving, making his shadow flicker and distort on the hedge walls. Then he rounded another corner and found himself facing a Blast-Ended Skrewt. Cedric was right - it was enormous. Ten feet long, it looked more like a giant scorpion than anything. Its long sting was curled over its back. Its thick armor glinted in the light from Harry's wand, which he pointed at it.

"That's a Skrewt" Someone said looking at the creature.

"Stupefy!" The spell hit the skrewt's armor and rebounded; Harry ducked just in time, but could smell burning hair; it had singed the top of his head. The skrewt issued a blast of fire from its end and flew forward toward him. "Impedimenta!" Harry yelled. The spell hit the skrewt's armor again and ricocheted off; Harry staggered back a few paces and fell over. "IMPEDIMENTA!" The skrewt was inches from him when it froze - he had managed to hit it on its fleshy, shell-less underside. Panting, Harry pushed himself away from it and ran, hard, in the opposite direction - the Impediment Curse was not permanent; the skrewt would be regaining the use of its legs at any moment. He took a left path and hit a dead end, a right, and hit another; forcing himself to stop, heart hammering, he performed the Four-Point Spell again, backtracked, and chose a path that would take him northwest. He had been hurrying along the new path for a few minutes, when he heard something in the path running parallel to his own that made him stop dead.