The following morning, hundreds of students are seated within the temporary stands, installed in the snow several meters above a hedge maze. A few creatures are ready to be released into a hedge maze for the first task of the 1792 Triwizard Tournament, and the cockatrice being put into position. Dexter makes his announcement before getting into the champions’ tent, inside the temporary stands’ press box, containing journalists from various nations:

  “Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the 1792 edition of the Triwizard Tournament. Each of the tasks involves considerable danger, and please remain seated at all times!”

  The champions are inside a tent, right next to the entrance to the hedge maze, with the three headmasters explaining to them what the first task is. Jadranka holds a satchel with three slips of parchment, labeled 1, 2 and 3, with Armand around them, ready for the draw of the order in which the contestants enter the maze for the first task.

  “Your objective is simple: catch the cockatrice in a hedge maze containing roaming monsters. On the cockatrice is a clue for the second task!” Armand explains to the three champions before the draw is made. “With one caveat: the cockatrice must be brought in alive; the clue disappears should the beast die!“

  “If, at any time, you wish to withdraw from the task, just shoot a red spark with your wand!” Jadranka adds, before the draw is made.

  Hadrian draws 1, meaning that he goes first. And then Thierry draws 2, while Britta is left with 3. As Dexter is about to leave the tent to sound the beginning of the task, under the crowd’s cheers:

  “At the whistle, you may enter the maze!” Dexter gives his instructions to Hadrian.

  Meanwhile, in the stands, the eight judges get into position, while the Care of Magical Creatures professor Luc subbed in for yesterday blows the whistle, procured specifically for the Triwizard Tournament.

  This plan is a complete gamble. I feel like the Triwizard Tournament is so dangerous that it might not be worth holding in its current form. This so-called supplement, while it might be a non-detectable poison lethal to humans, with a slow-acting venom as its active ingredient, might kill the cockatrice and hence make the event less dangerous, Luc ruminates as he sees that the cockatrice is still very much alive for the time being.

  Once the shot goes off, Hadrian dashes into the hedge maze and, as he gets lost trying to locate the cockatrice, runs into one dead end after the other.

  In one of those dead ends, he faces the first monster, a Fire Crab.

  Hadrian gets chased around by the Fire Crab in the maze, while keeping in mind that a cockatrice is on the loose within the maze. As he feels the heat on his back, he realizes that the crab is closing in on him. And could burn him to a crisp if the beast is allowed to creep in on him, keeping him on the run.

  But when he feels like the beast is too close to him for his own comfort, as he’s about to hit a dead end:

  “Everte Statum!” Hadrian yells at the Fire Crab, his back against a hedge wall.

  Under the eyes of the crowd, the Fire Crab is knocked back, causing the hedge maze to catch fire. Which makes the excitement of the crowd go up as the flames spread across the maze, and other monsters get on the move.

  “Hadrian could have handled the fire crab differently, for example a Stupefix or a Sleeping Charm…” Nurcan starts talking about how she could have handled the first monster differently, while seated right next to Alejandra to keep warm. “Then again, maybe a burning maze could force the cockatrice to fly!”

  “Not the safest method, I get it, but we shall see…” Alejandra sighs.

  Yet, the maze is now ablaze. Hadrian, feeling like a flaming maze could cause the cockatrice to flee, but not necessarily fly, casts another spell to try extinguishing the fire lit by the Fire Crab. He does so as he moves through the burning maze, and close to the judges’ stand:

  “Aguamenti!”

  With the judges’ stand narrowly saved from the flaming hedge maze, he seems to have strayed from trying to catch the cockatrice. Which is still on the loose somewhere in the maze, but not airborne yet.

  The cockatrice, sensing the smoke coming for it, starts flying as far away from it as possible. And, as soon as Hadrian sees it soar above the hedge, he starts thinking of ways to prevent it from straying too far.

  But, at the same time, the portion of the maze that hasn’t caught fire yet is about to ensnare him if he waits too long. On top of that, gale-force wind threatens to throw him off balance. At this point, he’s reminded that he still has a broomstick.

  “Accio broomstick!“ Hadrian then summons his broomstick, while he struggles to remain stable due to the wind.

  His broomstick appears in front of him just as he’s going to be caught in a magical vine. Once his broomstick is in his hands, he starts soaring under the cries of the crowd. Especially the Hogwarts supporters in the stands.

  As soon as he flies above the maze’s hedge walls, the audience’s attention turns skyward. But now he must dodge the breath of the beast as he would a dragon.

  “Now that’s my Hadrian!” Jace exclaims.

  Hadrian tries to close in on the cockatrice from behind. However, with each flap of the wings, he gets buffeted. Or the cockatrice rears its ugly rooster head, threatening to kill him with a single, well-aimed breath.

  Speaking of cockatrice breath, the green spew of the beast has hit the robe, burning a hole on it.

  I gave that potion to drink to the cockatrice yesterday afternoon; the cockatrice should be dying by now… Luc starts to hide his despair while the cockatrice is still alive and causing Hadrian to fly in circles over the maze.

  “Come on, you can’t hope to catch the cockatrice just by flying all day!” the Ravenclaw who proofread the Beauxbatons duo’s essays on goblins and New France in History of Magic yells at Hadrian, while seated right next to Relja.

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  “Even this Beauxbatons Revolutionary would have caught the cockatrice by now!” Relja comments in a broken English with a heavy Serbian accent, referring to Nurcan.

  “Who do you call a Revolutionary?” Vaidi, seated right next to Relja asks, as Hadrian still keeps his distance from the cockatrice, waiting for the right moment to cast a spell on it.

  But Relja stops short of telling his fellow Durmstrang student the name of the student he calls a Revolutionary, fearing that he might put that student in danger without wanting it.

  Spurred by the cries of the Hogwarts supporters, Hadrian is left wondering which spell to cast that could ensure the beast could be captured alive. However, he knows that one mis-aimed spell and he could be done. Or the other champions. Especially since he tries to herd the beast towards the champions’ tent while flying.

  With the flames around it being put out, Hadrian casts one last spell in an attempt to catch the cockatrice safely and collect the resulting clue:

  “Stupefy!”

  The spell hits the cockatrice on the edge of its starboard wing, causing the beast to free-fall to the ground. But little that he knows is that the clock is ticking in on him to collect the clue for the second task.

  Which is attached to the beast’s tail. Once the parchment on the cockatrice is collected by Hadrian, however, it appears that the slow-acting venom is about to break loose inside its body.

  “And it appears that the Hogwarts champion has caught the cockatrice!” Dexter announces to the crowd under its cheers, with the 7 judges still eligible to score giving out their scores.

  But while the scoring gets underway, with the 7 scores being tabulated, and a final score being given out to him, the Care of Magical Creatures professor gets ready to blow the whistle to signal the start of Thierry’s turn.

  Just as that whistle is about to be blown, however, in the cramped confines of the champions’ tent, the cockatrice acts violently as the clue gets “refilled” on its tail, and the effect of the Stupefix spell wears off.

  Combined with the effects of the slow-acting venom, the cockatrice’s latent rage explodes right in front of Hadrian’s eyes, and the other two champions’. His tattered robes get hit once again by a green cone of searing fluids.

  At the same time, the cockatrice, now broken free of the Stupefix spell as its eyes turn red, spreads corrosive fluids all over the tent. And catches the attention of the headmaster.

  “It appears an incident is taking place in the champions’ tent, stay clear of the champions’ tent and evacuate the stadium immediately!” Dexter’s orders are made clear, while hundreds of people start screaming as soon as the evac order is given.

  So while the spectators panic upon hearing about the incident in the champions’ tent, the champions seem to be a little troubled. More than just a little, in fact.

  Yet, as much as the champions might have wanted to evacuate, the tight space inside the tent makes it harder for them to evade the stream of cockatrice venom. All three cast their own spells to try to get the cockatrice under control:

  “Levicorpus!” Britta goes in first, hoping the beast being hoisted in the air by the ankle would prevent the venom from getting to them.

  But the creature being hit by a glancing blow only seemed to make its anger more intense, and Britta’s feet get hit by the venom, as are Hadrien’s.

  Thierry, on the other hand, casts a Sleeping charm, while the venom hasn’t reached him just yet. However, it seems like the resulting Sleeping charm hasn’t penetrated its hide. And, of course, the beast has turned to him, breathing venom in his face.

  The three champions, unfortunately, seem to have been hit by too much cockatrice venom to have much, if any, hope of survival.

  The champions’ tent starts crashing down under the effects of cockatrice venom being spit all over the place, leaving all three champions for dead as Hogwarts’ matron is about to arrive.

  Then the attention of the cockatrice, now freed from Levicorpus, is turned to the judges’ stand, which, under the effects of corrosion, crumbles. Which makes the beast fly off towards the ones still remaining.

  And the three headmasters, who are the last to leave the venue, after the other five judges already left, are about to leave the judges’ box when the beast breathes the last of its venom, aimed at them.

  The venom eats away at the pillars holding the judges’ box in place. By this point, the box collapses and the three headmasters are about to fall.

  “Arresto Momentum!” Jadranka casts in an attempt to prevent the other headmasters from getting injured.

  But it seems like Dexter’s great weight makes the landing more painful for him. Just less painful than without the spell.

  At this point, the cockatrice is now out of venom. However, the beast also seemingly has very little time left to live, thanks to the venom contained in the undetectable poison that has now kicked in enough to threaten its life.

  “Accio broomstick!” the three scream in unison, summoning their broomsticks to evade the beast.

  So for what little time the cockatrice has to live, the beast being faster than them on their broomsticks made them vulnerable to its attacks. With the three of them fleeing the cockatrice on rampage, waiting for its reserve of venom to recharge, Dexter loses balance while trying to cast a Shield Charm covering their backs.

  The resulting attempt to cast the spell draws the cockatrice’s attention. Once the flying beast gets close to Dexter, the slowest of the three, it then pecks at his ears, in an attempt to make him lose focus and throw him off the broomstick.

  After repeated pecking attacks, Dexter can no longer focus on flying the broomstick, with his ears bleeding, he falls off it. But in his fall, he still tries to use one last spell to save his hide:

  “Arresto Momentum!” he screams.

  But even then, Dexter still seems to violently slams the ground, while his fellow headmasters are now the ones who must deal with the angry cockatrice.

  Now that the cockatrice has enough venom to spit it, it doesn’t spit a whole lot of it. Yet, it does so at the bristles of the other two’s broomsticks as they close in on the castle’s Turris Magnus.

  Upon the venom hitting the bristles, the other two lose control of their broomsticks, no longer being able their trajectories, and they both violently hit the wall of the tower. Their totalled broomsticks’ remains also slide down the wall. But even Arresto Momentum only seemed to prevent worse injuries from happening, and potentially turning lethal injuries into non-lethal ones.

  But as the slow-acting venom causes the cockatrice’s blood vessels to rupture, its rampage is about to kill the beast in mid-air. As the beast’s bloodstream fails, it falls from the sky, since it can no longer stay airborne. The cockatrice’s heart attack kills it.

  Meanwhile, in the Great Hall, where the survivors from the cockatrice’s rampage are assembled, along with the surviving 5 judges, they are in shock from what just happened during the first task. They couldn’t believe that the tournament would claim the lives of the contestants from the get-go…

  “I can’t believe the Triwizard Tournament would be that dangerous!” Jace exclaims, in front of his fellow Slytherins. “Thank goodness the Goblet didn’t take my name!”

  “I feel like Durmstrang just took names of high achievers who seemed to be nicer towards Muggle-borns to build its team!” Vaidilute comments.

  I guess I’m lucky that the Goblet didn’t pick me. I don’t think I would be remembered in death as a martyr of the Revolution had I been chosen. Then again, maybe I integrated a little too well into Beauxbatons’ environment, Nurcan ruminates on what just happened. Have I been a bad Revolutionary?

  “J’espère vraiment que ni le Bab-I Humayun, ni la Convention Nationale, ne retiendra ma non-qualification contre moi, surtout quand les trois champions sont tous morts…” (I really hope that neither the Bab-I Humayun, nor the Convention Nationale, will hold my failure to qualify for the Triwizard Tournament against me, especially not when all three champions are dead…) Nurcan starts crying.

  “Non, Nurcan!” Alejandra tries to console her fellow Beauxbatons student. “Je te dois des excuses pour ce hex. Maintenant, arrête de me traiter comme une Royaliste de placard!” (I owe you apologies for the hex. Now, stop treating me like a closeted Royalist!)

  “Je le fais déjà. J’aurais jamais d? te traiter ainsi…” (I already do. I never should have treated you as such…)

  I could tell that she didn’t really believe in the Royalist cause, only that the Revolution was a topic wizards weren’t equipped to handle, a Lumos charm is cast in Nurcan’s mind.