Harry Potter: Don't touch

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- Degenerate! Wimp! Wretch! Weak! Brainless! Coward! Creature! An inferior creature!

Potter was in a terrible rage. He had never felt such anger, not even when he had been insulted by the unprofessor Snape in Potions class. Harry wanted to crush and destroy all living things, and was ready to put his threats into action on the first opponent he met... Bad luck for the snout-tail....

Harry only realised that he had only reached the second platform when he met the magical creature Hagrid had brought with him. He'd heard something about them, that they had powerful defences, immune to certain spells, and were better cast with simple curses rather than powerful ones, but Harry was too angry to choose the tactic of exhausting his opponent.

- Seko! Bombard!

The snot-tail's head first split into two halves and then exploded. Potter stepped over the corpse, not even considering the consequences of his anger, and continued spouting insults.

- Idiot! A lame-ass! Pussy! Moron! Crybaby!

The victim of Potter's insults was Potter himself. All his rage was directed at himself. He knew there must be a boggart somewhere nearby, he knew that boggarts turned into Piers at his appearance, and he knew the spell that should scare the spirit away; he knew everything he needed to know, but one... One sudden appearance of Polkiss, and he forgot everything. He had broken the law by trying to use the third Unforgivable, he had broken Riddle's precautions, he had lost his guard, Moody's constant control of the situation had passed him by, even his own adequacy and rationality of thought had been betrayed!

It was as if he had returned to his childhood as a little boy, frightened and in panic he ran as far away from the dreaded 'beech' as possible. Should we do something? One must fight one's fears.

As it turned out, Harry ran in the right direction, so returning to the boggart is a terrible waste of time, which Potter, due to not the most powerful performances in the first two trials, already did not have. All the contestants have been in the maze for a while now, and it's entirely possible that someone could even make it to the final platform, or even grab the trophy.

To combat his fears and take out his rage, Harry decided to chop up all the dangerous magical creatures he was unlucky enough to meet on his way. And not with the most authorised spells. If the second site was monitored, he'd be sent to Azkaban anyway, he'd used a death curse, or rather, tried to use one, but that wasn't the point. There was nothing he could do about it, so there was no point in hiding.

Potter was lucky, after an hour of wandering, a boggart came out to meet him. Harry was too fast, he didn't even have time to turn round Pierce.

- Ridiculus! Ridiculus! Ridiculus!

Potter didn't rest until the boggart was dead. Almost immediately he met another one, then another and another. Harry savoured the sweet revenge on magical creatures some more and stopped killing the encountered boggarts, the number of which had already reached ten.

'What causes such a cluster of one species? Is it supposed to be like this? Is this some kind of boggart valley?' Harry's musings were interrupted by a loud explosion about a hundred metres away from him. Followed by a scream:

- Bitch! Fuck! B@&%t! Bitch!

Then some more loud male speech in French.

Harry hurried towards the sounds of swearing, which changed to the sounds of fighting as he approached. Judging from the words, someone from Beauxbaton and Anton Granny were fighting.

When they reached the place of the fight, which was a small clearing with many passages leading to it, Harry saw Adrian Roux pinning Nana against the wall. Four transparent swords were swirling around Beauxbaton, periodically attacking the Durmstrang student, and Roux was also transfiguring animals and sending them to attack Anton. Gran fought back with obviously dark curses - and he wasn't that simple after all - but still, his skills weren't enough to hold off the onslaught of the enemy. Harry had two options, both winnable.

One: wait for Adrian to defeat Nana, then stun the Beauxbaton student and thus take two opponents out of the game at once.

And the second: stun Adrian at once and try to take Granny as an ally. This option seemed more effective and correct to him, but there was a risk that Nana would not want to ally, and then he might attack.

The risk was worth gaining an ally.

'Stupefy!' - Harry thought, aiming his wand at Adrian's back.

Potter's non-verbal spells were a bit slow, so he couldn't stun Roux on the first attempt, but the second attempt had already succeeded.

Adrian Roux probably didn't even realise where the spell had come from. He fell to the ground without moving.

- Hey Anton, how about... Unite? - Harry stepped into the clearing, but kept his wand up and ready for emergency self defence.

- Justin's mate! - Anton rejoiced, tucking his wand into his pocket. - I remember you! Yes, let's team up! You'll have vodka! - The last statement was not a question.

- No, I won't, and there's nowhere to get it here, unfortunately, at the entrance all the strangers ...

Grandma took out a bottle from behind his back and started to drink it, taking big gulps of the liquid.

- Where from? I don't care. We'll go west through the passages filled with boggarts. The two of us can handle them, and if we run into other champions, we can defend ourselves. All right? Are you listening to me?

- Yeah, fuck you! Let's go through the boggart aisles! Who the fuck are boggarts anyway?

- Boggarts are ghosts that turn into whatever you're most afraid of. The spell against them is 'Ridiculus', you have to imagine some funny situation with a boggart.

Surprisingly he had never met them, Potter was even afraid to imagine the look of what the boggart would take on when the encounter happened. The flag of America? A teetotaler? A broken bottle of vodka?

- I'm not afraid of anything! - Granny smacked the bottle on his head. Both of them held up. - I can easily deal with boggart fools.

* * *

Harry decided to keep Nana away from the ghosts just in case, he wasn't sure he was adequate or capable of dealing with his fears, so he went first. Potter had his own scores to settle with the ghosts, but he didn't give in to the desire for revenge, so he simply chased the Ridiculus boggarts out of the way. At the sight of them, they tried to turn into a cracked transparent Pierce, which suggested the image of Anton's boggart. Harry was wary, and so far no boggart had fully completed its transformation. Their team had been very quick and easy in dealing with the challenges of the second site. The first problem arose when they came to a branching fork.

- Listen, Anton, there is a fork, seven different paths, if we will examine them as a group, then I think our journey will be very long, I suggest that we split up temporarily. Whoever finds the way out, shoots yellow sparks.

- Ooh, bitch! Stupid fork, it's the pussies! They put it here on purpose! My dad Volodya always told me that everything is the fault of the Pindos! - Granny, with an angry grimace, expressed his complaints to the maze element and the 'Pindos', and then went to the rightmost passage.

Harry, on the other hand, headed for the leftmost. Luck didn't favour him; it was only after half an hour that he realised he was going backwards, back to the beginning of the labyrinth, but in a different way. Potter was about to turn around when suddenly, not far away, from the direction he was going, he heard the rumble of a phoenix and a woman's scream.

- Fraudis visus,' Potter cast a chameleon spell on himself and, turning dark green, stood close to the wall of the maze and waited.

He had agreed to team up with Fleur and Justin, he also wanted to try and negotiate with any Hogwarts champions he met. But the scream was clearly female, and among his potential allies only Delacourt could make it, but Fleur had started before him, and he wasn't moving fast enough as it was, but he'd been walking backwards for half an hour, so it was someone who'd started later than him. Which meant it could only be....

Juliette Laurent emerged from around the corner, looking rather ragged. Her hair was smoking a little, the sleeve of her T-shirt ripped off. The Beauxbaton student had the misfortune of running into the Phoenix. And now it was doubly unlucky, she was in Potter's path.

Harry slowly raised his wand and, after waiting for Juliette to walk past him, released a non-verbal stunner into her back. Juliette, never realising she had been knocked out, fell to the ground unconscious.

Potter checked her condition and walked back towards the fork. He felt no remorse. Battles between champions were allowed, Juliette was nobody to him, and only one could win the Cup. In these two hours he had already knocked two Beauxbaton champions out of the competition at once, and both victories had been secured by a single non-verbal stun fired into his back. Suddenness is indeed the best weapon.

Exactly as Harry returned to the fork in the road, yellow sparks appeared in the air on the far right.

Granny had found a way out.

Potter took the far right passage and ran down it until he came to a dead end. Apparently, the Durmstrang student had managed to get back and go to some other fork. After finding a dead end in the far right passage, Anton should have headed for the neighbouring passage, it would have been logical. However, Granny and logic were a bit incompatible, so it was impossible to say for sure. Still...

- Nulus Venefium Ager,' Harry punched a gap in the left wall of the maze.

He hoped that through the gap he could cross into another passage. Indeed, a light was visible through the hole. Potter climbed into the passage and crawled through the gap, after five seconds the maze began to repair the damage and Harry re-used the plant destruction spell.

Finally he made it out into the next passage and ran towards the place where yellow sparks hovered above. He almost collided with Evette Roux around the corner, but he managed to slow down at the last moment.

- Adrian, it's you, isn't it? - Evette asked in English and, without waiting for an answer, continued: - You should have known how worried I was! I thought that idiot had beaten you. I'm sorry I underestimated you, it's just that you know how it looks, he's here and you're not, so I thought... Anyway, it doesn't matter, don't break the disillusionment spell, Grandma was expecting someone, we can ambush them. What took you so long, by the way?

Potter stared at Evette in surprise. It wasn't until the end of the speech that he realised how he could have been confused with the stout Adrian. He was still wearing the disillusionment spell!

- Sorry, met Potter, got held up,' Harry tried to make his voice sound like Adrian's, which he had only heard twice. I think Moody had told him about the spell of voice impersonation, but Harry couldn't remember the verbal wording of it.

- What are you? A ghost? You're not Adrian! - Evette Roux tried to point her wand at him, but Harry had been at the ready a long time ago.

- Expelliarmus! - Evet's wand flew into his hand. - My name is Harry Potter. Finite!

Harry took off his disguise.

- Harry, it's you! Don't scare me like that, I thought you were from Durmstrang! Let me get that,' Evette reached for her wand.

- Relassio! - Harry sent a stream of boiling water into Rue's hand.

She yanked it away just in time, and the hot water missed its target.

- What are you doing?

- I don't trust you, that's what,' Harry explained. - Where's Gran?

- He was the one waiting for you, wasn't he? You misunderstood me, we weren't planning to ambush you....

- If you don't want to be eliminated from the battle for the cup, you better answer my questions or I'll stun you and go find him myself,' Harry increased his distance from Evette a little. He was sure he wouldn't miss if he tried to escape, but if Ru tried to snatch his wand with a jerk, he might not react.

- I stunned Anton, releasing red sparks.

Bastard! She knocked out his ally!

- He was taken by your teacher with the black hair and the evil face. He's also...

- I know who it was, got it from the description - Snape he recognises even from the short description. - It doesn't matter now at all, who cares who took him in the first place, tell me why you decided to stun your opponents?

Potter stunned Juliette himself, but he only did it because she was in his way, Ru's brother and sister were clearly planning to ambush him.

- All right, I'll tell you, just promise me you'll let me go, okay?

- Deal,' Potter lied calmly. - So why?

- In order to get to the final part of the maze, the number of champions in the maze must be no more than five. We reduce the number in order to win, simple as that. We're not doing anything wrong, it was designed that way, obviously not by us. I'm just adjusting to the game, that's all.

- I see. Who have you knocked out so far?

- Diggory, Granny and Lundren. Your ginger, I know, beat Hypotenuse. But Otto has beaten another ginger, though probably the same one. We tried to catch him here, Adrian went after Nana, and I waited for Otto. We weren't going to touch you.

- Oh, yeah. What was that for?

Evet didn't know what to say.

- Well, that's not all. What do you know about the other champions? Their locations. Where can I find Justin Finch-Fletchley or Fleur Delacour?

- I know most of it and I'll tell you everything, just let me go. Delacourt and Kram have teamed up and are waiting for the passage to open in the west, Lundren told us. Finch-Fletchley started later than you, he's still far away, either north of where you came from or north-west, there's two passages, one for Juliette and one for Finch-Fletchley. That's all I know. Now let me go, you promised.

- I will. Stupefy! - Harry fired a stun spell at Evet Rue. It was hard to miss at point-blank range.

He had a good chance of winning the Tournament. The fact that he was a late starter didn't matter as much as the fact that he was still up and had already knocked three Beauxbaton students out of the draw. At the moment there are still... eight... No, seven people still participating: himself, either Fred or George Weasley, Justin Finch-Fletchley, Fleur Delacourt, Basel Francois, Johan Otto, and Victor Krum. After the defeat of two more competitors, somehow the passage to the third court should open up, and that's where the speed will decide everything. While there are still seven champions, he needs to find Justin and team up to get ahead of the rest.