All the noise was hushed as the hedges rose around Annabeth. They cast long shadows across the entire passage, throwing Annabeth and Harry into darkness. The hedges were unpruned and wild looking, giving Annabeth the impression of fingers and claws reaching out in the dark, trying to grab her. Shivering, Annabeth lit the tip of her wand, and next to her she heard and saw Harry do the same.
After only a minute or two, they reached a fork in the path.
"Good luck, Harry," Annabeth said, turning towards the right fork.
"You too, Annabeth." Harry turned towards the left, and then he was gone as Annabeth started walking and the whistle blew again.
The maze was dark and only getting darker, and Annabeth was reminded so strongly of the labyrinth that she had to stop and take a short second to convince her mind otherwise. Still, it was a maze, and it was packed with obstacles, and she felt like she was being watched by unseen eyes, and it was dark. Really dark. The light from her wand falling over the dirt ground was just like the beams of Percy, Annabeth, Grover, and Tyson's flashlights, though the wand's light was less focused, and Annabeth was alone.
The whistle sounded a third time. Everyone was in.
Annabeth glanced up. She couldn't see the stands, which meant they couldn't see her. Quickly, Annabeth took off her baggy sweater and undid the knot around her waist, grabbing her actual dagger and holster that she had tied to her back.
Of course she had expected them to take her weapons. Even if she had been hoping they wouldn't, Annabeth wasn't one to leave things up to chance.
Strapping the holster onto its rightful place on her arm, Annabeth put her sweater back on and continued.
She couldn't shake the feeling that she was being watched, and after a moment, Annabeth heard something: little scuttling footsteps. She knew those sounds. It was one of Hagrid's Blast Ended Skrewts, and judging by how fast they had grown at the beginning of the year and the volume of the scuttles, Annabeth guessed that it was a lot bigger than it had been when she'd last seen it.
Unfortunately, she was right.
The skrewt rounded a corner, and it was huge, bigger than the scorpions had been in the woods at Camp. What had Hagrid been feeding them?!
The exoskeleton was a deep red, armored plates layered over each other, stinger curved over its back and dripping with venom. As it scuttled forward, it's butt let out a short blast of fire, propelling it forward a few feet.
Annabeth unsheathed her dagger and tensed, sinking into her stance.
The Skrewt lashed out with a claw, unreasonably fast for a bug its size. Annabeth dogged and felt the pincers snap shut on thin air right next to her neck. She ran to the side, away from a corner, looking for a weakness in the shell. After a second, still dodging the claws and stinger, she found it.
Where one of the legs met the rest of the body, where the armor plates overlapped. When the skrewt moved that leg to walk, a gap formed, just big enough for a dagger or a well aimed spell.
Annabeth had a plan. She fell back and away from any corners, hopping over a root that curved up from the ground. She waited until the skrewt was just in the right position, and—
"Incendio!" Annabeth shouted, aiming for the face. The spell sent a thin jet of flame straight for where an eye might have been and hit true, sending the screw scrambling backwards.
One of the scuttling legs hooked around the root and sent the skrewt flailing. It wasn't enough to knock it down, but it was enough for Annabeth to get at its underbelly, where the armor was soft and pliable. Carefully, she tried to get close, but a scuttling leg cut her cheek and she fell back, adjusting her grip on her dagger.
Throwing her dagger, Annabeth watched it sail between flailing legs and hit the soft spot, sinking in to the hilt. The skrewt went still and disintegrated, fading away until all that was left was the shell.
The shell was now empty and hollow, and Annabeth's dagger lay inside on the bottom. She reached in and pulled it out, dusted it off, and sheathed it. Wiping a bit of the blood from her face, Annabeth moved on.
Something moved around a corner. Annabeth tensed. She unsheathed her dagger again, but otherwise kept going. She edged forward cautiously, reached the corner, raised her dagger, and lunged around the side to find... Harry.
His wand was out too, and he looked nervous. When he saw Annabeth, he relaxed.
"I thought they took that away?" Harry said, pointing at Annabeth's dagger.
"They took away a spare," Annabeth said. "Always have extra weapons."
"Oh." Harry gestured to the cut on Annabeth's cheek. "What happened?"
Annabeth wiped away a bit more blood, staining the sleeve of her sweatshirt. "A Skrewt," she said. "Watch out for them, they're huge and I don't know how many there are."
Harry nodded, and they went their separate ways again.
Annabeth kept her eyes peeled as she walked. She turned right, then left, found a dead end, backtracked, and turned right again. After a little bit, she glanced up at the sky. The stars were out now, and though the hedges blocked out most of them, the passage Annabeth was in was long, and she had a view of some.
Looking around for something familiar, Annabeth spotted her best bet at navigation: Ursa Major. It lay in the stars behind her, so Annabeth turned around and reoriented herself. She had started in the south-east end of the maze. To get to the center and the cup, she had to go northwest.
She passed the dead ended left turn she had taken a few minutes ago and took the next left, which was when she heard the scream.
It was high pitched, distant but not too far. Annabeth turned towards the sound, tense. It had sounded like Fleur. Annabeth broke into a run. Whatever had caused the scream, Fleur had sounded terrified, and Annabeth hadn't forgotten what had happened with the grindylows during the second task.
She was so focused on tracking the sound that she almost ran straight into the figure that had stepped onto the path. She stopped, expecting Harry or Viktor going towards the scream too, but it was...
"Percy?"
He looked at her, and it was definitely him, but something felt... wrong. His eyes were darting around, his stance tense. But it wasn't battle tense, it was something else.
"What are you doing here?" Annabeth asked carefully. This didn't feel right.
"I couldn't keep it in any longer," Percy said, and his voice was strange, flat. "I met someone. A girl."
"A girl," Annabeth repeated, her throat clenching. "What do you mean?"
"I mean I'm leaving you." Percy said, his stare going cold. "My new girlfriend is so much better than you. Did you really think you were enough for me?"
Annabeth's heart almost stopped. "What? Percy—"
"Don't you get it?" He said, voice rising. "You're not enough. You never were. Everyone agrees. We were never serious, anyway. I never even loved you. You're not enough."
"Why..." Annabeth's breathing stuttered as her vision blurred with tears. "What... Seaweed Brain—"
Percy scoffed. "What kind of a name is that? This is why I hate you, Annabeth. You're always criticizing me no matter what I do."
Annabeth blinked. That wasn't... that wasn't right. She had been calling him that since they met. Percy had come to love that nickname, hadn't he? Why was he acting like he'd never heard it before? He wouldn't have suddenly forgotten it, right? Unless... this wasn't Percy.
Annabeth almost slapped herself in the face. How had she not known this sooner? She was smarter than that. She had to be smarter than that.
"You're a boggart," Annabeth said, though her breathing was still shaky. "You're not real."
"Now you're trying to gaslight me?" boggart-Percy sneered, his face filled with hate. It looked so alien on his face, directed at Annabeth, and the sight almost made her cry. "This is why everyone hates you."
"Riddikulus!"
Boggart-Percy collapsed in a cloud of gray smoke, and when it cleared, a little guinea pig lay where he had just been. Annabeth let out a small, half-hearted chuckle, and it vanished in a poof of more smoke.
Annabeth leaned against the hedge and sank down, burying her face in her hands as she let out a quiet sob. It wasn't real. That wasn't Percy. Percy wasn't abandoning her. He wouldn't do that. That wasn't him. It wasn't. It wasn't.
Still, her breath shook and so did her hands and the rest of her body, and she took in deep breaths while she sat. She was so disoriented that she barely noticed a tugging sensation on her arm, and she didn't associate it with anything until she looked up.
A little potato man was standing right next to her, and the second she made eye contact, it bolted, cackling. And it had Annabeth's wand in its grip.
"Hey!" she shouted, scrambling to her feet and running after it.
The potato man rounded a corner, and Annabeth turned the same one and saw it just standing there, right in the middle of the passage. It stuck its creepy little tongue out at Annabeth as she ran towards it and it bolted right as she got close.
Another corner, and Annabeth paused. Pushing aside some branches at the bend, Annabeth peered through them to see the potato man just standing there around the corner, waiting. So it wanted a chase, huh? Well, it would get a Chase.
Annabeth looked around. What she needed was a long range weapon, something to shoot with. Ironically, the potato man had her wand, the thing she needed to get it back. Annabeth reached for the waistband of her shorts automatically before she remembered that her slingshot had been confiscated. Annabeth sighed in frustration. A slingshot would have been pretty convenient right about now.
Then she realized. A slingshot.
Parting the hedge even more and checking every so often that the potato man was still there, Annabeth snapped off two branches that looked like they would work. Then she rounded the corner and ran at the potato man, to keep it from getting bored and actually running off with Annabeth's wand.
After a few more turns, Annabeth stopped again. Periodically checking on potato man, Annabeth pulled off the longest leaves she could find from the hedge and stuffing them in the pocket of her sweater. Another few turns later, Annabeth weaved the leaves together until she had three long but small ropes.
Running again, Annabeth stopped at another corner and positioned the sticks. They weren't perfect, but it would make for a sturdy slingshot. She braided the three ropes around the sticks, still checking that potato man was still there every so often. She tied off the braid, ran a little more, and pulled the rubber band out of her hair.
She looped it twice over the tops of the two sticks, which curved out to make a shaky V. More resistance would mean more velocity, which was exactly what Annabeth wanted. Picking up a small rock, Annabeth loaded her new weapon.
Slowly, Annabeth peered through the corner of the hedge and aimed the rock just right. She took a breath, and, as she let it out, she fired.
The rock hit potato man a split second later, right on the head. Potato man let out a weird, high pitched scream and dropped the wand, falling backwards.
Grinning, Annabeth ran around the corner and grabbed her wand while potato man was still dazed. She was always reluctant to kill things that were helpless, so Annabeth sheathed her wand and left potato man there. Monsters tended to heal pretty quickly. It would be fine.
Annabeth tucked the slingshot into the waistband of her shorts. It wasn't a magical aim-bot thing, but it had worked just fine.
The next few minutes were mostly uneventful. She had gotten herself way off track with the potato man, so she turned a few bends until she could find Ursa Major again. After that, it was two dead ends, one circle, a few turns, and a lot of walking.
And then there was a rustle behind her, when there had been nothing before. Annabeth whirled around, dagger out, to find the one and only Viktor Krum, pointing his wand straight at Annabeth. But something was... off.
Nothing seemed right in this maze. Viktor's eyes weren't cold exactly, they were more... glazed. His expression was completely blank, and Annabeth found it familiar, but from where? Then Viktor raised his wand slightly higher.
"What the hell are you—"
"Crucio!"
It was the worst pain Annabeth had ever felt.
It was like she had been thrown into the river Acheron, every inch of her body searing with pain so intense it blacked out her vision and sent her crashing to the ground. Her eyes watered, her teeth were clenched so hard they might break, her entire body was shaking. She couldn't think. Every movement only worsened the pain, and Annabeth's fingers were clumsy and numb as she tried fruitlessly to push herself up, gasping with the force of the pain.. She didn't even realize she was screaming.
"Stupefy!"
Just as soon as it had started, the pain stopped. Annabeth lay on the ground, shaking, out of breath, as a hand closed around her shoulder.
"Are you alr—"
Instinctively, her arm jerked back and connected with something fleshy, and she managed to push herself upright, ready to fight, but it was only Harry. Annabeth only relaxed when she saw Krum's prone body a few feet to her left.
Harry clutched his shoulder, looking pale.
"Sorry," Annabeth muttered, wiping the water from her eyes. "You scared me."
"Yeah..." Harry said. "Are you alright?"
"Fine." Annabeth accepted Harry's hand and pulled herself up, grabbing a branch of the hedge until she felt steady on her feet. "He just came out of nowhere..."
"I can't believe this," Harry said, staring at Krum. "I thought he was alright."
"Yeah. Me too."
"Did you hear Fleur scream earlier?" Harry asked.
Annabeth nodded. "Maybe it was him."
"I don't know," Harry said slowly.
Staring down at Krum's unconscious form, Annabeth stood straighter. "We should just leave him there," she said.
"No," Said Harry. "I reckon we should send up red sparks. Someone'll come and collect him... otherwise he'll probably be eaten by a skrewt."
"I don't have a problem with that."
Harry shook his head and aimed his wand at the sky. A shower of red sparks shot out of it, rising thirty feet in the air before it stopped, just hovering there. They stood there for a minute or two, watching the sparks twinkle, before Annabeth sighed.
"We should get going."
"What?" Harry said. "Oh... yeah... right..."
They went up the dark path together, walking side by side, but neither of them said a word. Annabeth was mad at herself. How could she have let that happen? She needed to be more alert. That couldn't happen again. They reached a fork in the road.
"Until we meet again," Annabeth said. "Gook luck."
"You too. I really mean it."
They stared at each other for a second, and then they went their separate ways.