Identify the outlier...
Audette was certain for a while as those words echoed in her skull that she was drunkenly spiralling face first in her comfy bed, imagining some fantasy in which she'd met the elusive Headmaster of Hogwarts in person.
Before her eyes were capable of opening - before even a single electric pulse could command a sinew in her body to shift - Audette's ears gave away that she was definitely not in her comfy bed and instead in a very discomforting place.
Sounds of landscape demolition reverberated everywhere; the snapping of gigantic branches, splashing of spraying water, and the most gravelly grind of rock on rock resulted in her ears already ringing sorely by the time she came to below the surface of her skin.
Her long eyelashes were dancing in tremendous wind gusts - apparently laying somewhere in a misty, chilly place that was jostling and chaotic under her stunned body. She slumped her face to the side weakly against her shoulder, tiny broken grunts catching in her throat. The crown of her skull was banging against a hard vertical surface; sat upright in a mysterious location.
Her heart rammed out of control when it became obvious even without a visual - the reek of putrefaction scalded her nostrils, something was very wrong, and it was imperative she get up.
The last tangible memories she could recall reminded her of blackout drinking nights, jilted and imperfect; following Severus Snape's Batman capes through the hallways of Hogwarts for some reason, then jumping to the final cryptic words of Albus Dumbledore in his office; identify the outlier.
None of it made any sense. Multiple pieces of the puzzle were tossed clean off the table, and she hadn't been inebriated for a single second of that morning.
The increase in her blood pressure prompted her to twitch her fingers, raising them to a splitting headache blossoming behind her forehead.
A boy was screaming at the top of his lungs, wailing even. The heartbreaking anguish characterizing that shrieking was so disturbing...someone surely had died.
Get. Up. Or you might very well be next, Audette's internal monologue instructed her fiercely.
She fought through inducing apathy to prevent returning to the realm of unconsciousness. One dry eyelid pried open, then the other.
What came into focus was nearly indescribable.
A slew of abnormally large bones deriving from some unknown humanoid creature - mostly of the femur variety but not limited to - were tied with serpentine vines to form a barricade, crackling against one another to shield her view beyond the enclosure she was in.
Golden sunlight sprayed in at her weakened vision beyond the thin slits provided by the tight-knit skeletal pen.
Audette pushed her spine against the wall behind her to dizzily stand, but her head felt like it was filled with sand and weighed a thousand tons. It didn't help that the floor kept wavering up and down unevenly with each inexplicable guttural boom invading her ears, as if she were trapped at the center of an out of control tilt-a-whirl theme park ride.
One thing at a time. Focus.
Audette closed her eyes and breathed deeply.
She reluctantly reopened them and inspected the flooring first, where her familiar grey slippers were skittering everywhere due to a lack of a stable plane. The surfacing was comprised of perhaps soft ash wood overlapped messily in a shingle patterning.
With every inkling of determination she lifted her face to the boundary along her left; a permeable wall jaunted in a squiggly line between her cage and the next persons, also comprised of subjective bones. To her right; the same condition.
She was a triangular cage of sorts, slanted dramatically at a dangerous twenty degrees towards a central pole, much like a carousel, except compartmentalized.
At least eight other triangular cages must have been sharing the same central pole in a nightmare mathematically inept circle, resulting in the captives being forced by the laws of gravity to cower helplessly in the middle.
It was a chocolate orange made of unidentifiable bones, plants and human prisoners.
A young boy, probably no more than twelve with long silvery hair blowing in the wind, was the source of the hysterical shouting on her right; having somehow crawled against the impossible slant to make his way to the outer edge of his cage, now clinging to the tightly sewn exterior.
On her left lay the anonymous Ravenclaw boy from Dumbledore's office; slumped into his triangular lowpoint and still incapacitated with his head slamming mercilessly against the makeshift hardscape.
Audette was paralyzed for a second, aware that her outfit from the trial ceremony had not changed, and that she had been requested to Dumbledore's office with a crew of people - but vital snippets of the interaction were entirely erased.
If the Ravenclaw boy was there, then surely...
Blaise.
"Blaise! Blaise! Zabini!" Audette started to holler in a trembling voice, hoping he was somewhere on the other side of the circular jailhouse.
No answer. He was probably still out like a light.
Only the misery of prisoners crying and whimpering reflected back at her.
The jangling of chains drew her attention to a gigantic silver padlock rhythmically bouncing at the outermost region of her unmentionable aviary. She came to the not so brilliant conclusion that a doorway within the bone structure must exist at the highest point of each cell where the shouting boy was latched in terror.
Clinging now to the westernmost wall of osteological framework, Audette fought viciously one weak arm at a time against the earth shattering shaking to clamber drunkenly to the top of her cage alongside the fair-haired occupant on her right.
It was a tedious job as her decorative shoes bared absolutely no grip and she fell flat onto her stomach many times, only clinging by her fingertips just hardly before returning to the achieved elevation.
She reached the top in a sweaty disaster, and what she saw almost made her wish she could go back to being obliviously asleep.
Wrapping her hands around two slimy bones she shifted one open eye with the other shut to clearly discern what was beyond.
Below, a vast landscape was spiralling by at ridiculous speed. Old growth forests of at least one hundred and fifty years spanning several storeys high appeared as puffy green popsicles from the other wordly elevation they were suspended at. Deep lakes might as well have been puddles - rivers a trickle of tears against the Earth. It was a scientific miracle that a single person could breathe at such an elevation in the cage.
Tears of terror ran down her cheeks when she noticed the swing of a megalithic rock foot shift into view to stomp down on a grove of twiggy aspens, crushing twenty-plus trees at once. The cage rocketed at the same time, explaining in full why their prisons were so unstable.
A lifetime of growing up as the daughter of Montgomery Bellarose left Audette with everything she needed to know; they were strapped to none other than a stone giant.
Beings formed billions of years ago when the Earth came into fruition, they were neither negotiable nor burdened by the concept of time. Most were speculated to have "fallen asleep" in the ocean for thousands of years, misinterpreted as uninhabitable, barren craggy islands with very little vegetation - others chose to form reputable mountain ranges in the same pacified state.
Magical research had identified many stone giants as permanently hibernating terrestrial beings likely not to reawaken, if at all. Infact, an artistic map hung in Droopy's Magiozoology classroom depicting the pinpoint locations of all known, resting stone giants. It was unnervingly full of dots; just about anywhere people were residing, below their feet was a dozing rock beast.
But some stone giants possessed volatile personalities - most of which had been wiped out by armies of magicals. Ancient accounts from magical Rome suggested that these types tended to march when aggravated or severely bloodthirsty, collecting living creatures for a gruesome ending later. These raids led to the development of monumental statues meant to steer away stone giants by mimicking one at a megalithic gateway, even inspiring the famous tales of Zeus.
The final of the wakened stone giants tended to quietly feed on the neighbouring, unintelligent flesh giants that shared their remote mountain ranges - who usually and foolishly established themselves on top of rock giants, only to be swallowed up barbarically by the ancient beings at random centennial intervals.
That would explain the scale of the osseous cages - they were constructed from flesh giant bones. Small flecks of black meat still clung to segments of fragmented and forgotten remains, rendering the cells absolutely rank.
Hagrid was not going to be happy, but leave it to Montgomery to find and manage a hostile stone giant for the tournament.
Audette desired to remove her gloves in absolute revolt from the sticky bones of whatever poor soul's remains had been used to create their crates by the giants, but it would only send her right back to the center of the rat trap.
The creature continued to thunder across a mossy landscape that Audette absolutely could not place - even as a primary resident of Ireland...albeit one kept in basic rural disconnect.
All of the natural systems were familiar; the scent of earthen rot, rocky terrains staggered with veiny rivers, and the endless blanket of green moss and low vegetation - yet still, she was lost for her whereabouts.
After an hour all of the captives had woken up in the circle of jiggling bones and angled flooring - aware of one another even though they could not see beyond two or three cages on their left or right in the dial. Some were sensationally annoying and hadn't stopped crying for over thirty minutes, infectiously prompting their peers to do the same. Others were banding together to attempt a futile jailbreak.
Audette contrarily had shut down and petrified herself to the doorway of her cage at the highest elevation, which at first required her muscles to work overtime to grip her in place. Now it seemed that no effort at all was necessary to cling there, numb and stupefied like a plank of dead wood.
Just as the monster began to trample into a vista dotted with slender trees everything changed.
One Durmstrang boy was blathering his face off, bragging about a supposed breakthrough while digging a hole in the bottom of his cell with a snapped shard of bone, when a sound like a foghorn bellowed from within the giant to cut him off.
The phenomenal behemoth stopped in it's tracks like a steampunk mechanism with a fuel gauge of zero.
It wobbled there for a moment mysteriously, and they all held their breaths in mutual fear that it was preparing to reach in and eat one of them randomly, when the whiz of a broomstick shot past.
Audette mentally woke up again for the first time in an hour, her face animated as she craned her neck to gaze upwards and around for the champion witch or wizard.
Please be Malfoy, please be Malfoy...she begged selfishly.
With his track record for success why wouldn't it be? He was the fastest flier in the school, and was already heartily scouted for major professional quidditch teams.
There they were again for a split second - the champion circling the giant - and her hope brightened only to be fruitfully extinguished. Upon the next rotation she caught a more detailed image of the individual, who was clad in a powder blue flight jacket: Beauxbatons.
A secondary sonorous growl erupted from within the boiling depths of the stone giant, before a catastrophic stroke of it's tree-infested arm swung through the air to attempt swatting away the champion like a nat in it's face.
A second champion, then a third arrived; both from Erenholl to combat the beast. A fourth, this one in all black; Durmstrang.
"Help us! Help us!" a daft girl passionately screamed from the other side of the now wildly swinging cage - as if the champions were not there for that exact reason and instead were intending to fight with a sentient portion of the Earth that spewed lava for their own entertainment.
Oh, liquidation...right.
The enclosure rocketed in place violently as an airborne object collided with it, and Audette turned her face to peer over her shoulder where something exciting was apparently unraveling a few cages down.
Begging and crying in high pitches broke out in one concentrated sector of the jail she could not visually perceive, "Please! No! Don't leave me!"
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"You have to come back!"
"Audette? Are you in there?" Theo's rich voice called breathlessly over the madness.
In the center of a shallow lake the giant was now furiously rotating in place, attempting to close it's globular excuses for fists around skirting champions, belching molten lava down it's front like a baby at a high chair.
The motion was effectively producing a zero-gravity zone in the chicken coop. Helpless inhabitants who couldn't catch a grip on anything were stumbling and slamming into the walls and ceiling. The neighbouring silver-haired boy's nose rammed off of a tibula right next to Audette, splattering blood on her dress and hair.
"Audette!" Theodore's voice chimed again, this time louder and stronger with growing desperation.
Audette blinked through tears, too scared at first to speak as if she were Rose from the Titanic, floating there on that icy door with a rescuers flashlight only meters away. She managed to croak, "H-here, Theodore, I-I'm here."
She stuck her arm out of the largest gap in the enclosure to wave, and he came into view floating on a sleek black broom, his glove grabbing onto bones as he circumvented the circumference of the jangling cage to hang on like an untethered astronaut to a spiralling spaceship.
Not since their first year flying lessons had she seen Theodore on a broomstick, yet there he was - confidently and gracefully maneuvering himself, dressed ironically in a Hogwarts Quidditch uniform. A strangely useless key ring was dangling from his neck, probably hosting a hundred of the silvery tools.
Reaching the front of her cage he twisted his thick brown glove in her tiny dress mitten, panting and sweating, his long chocolate hair blowing back in the wind. They pressed their foreheads together through the crack and Audette bawled like a newborn baby.
He consoled her, "Okay, it's alright Audette just breathe with me. I'm going to get you out of there."
"Draco...where is he?" she choked out.
Theodore inhaled several gasping breaths before responding, "Potter chased him down right off the launch pad. They were practically fist fighting in the air. For what reason is imprecise to me, nevertheless he may not make it in time for this first portion, so I have two of you to free. Concentrate - who else was with you before you woke up here? Someone from Slytherin I expect."
"Zabini," Audette shook her head as nausea bubbled in her throat dangerously from both the seasickness of her cell and the notion that Draco was out there with an additional, unanticipated problem on his hands.
Ginny Weasley's nebulous words in Dumbledore's office came searing back in full force, Harry will stop Malfoy and the rest of you monsters, you can count on it.
"Just terrific, he's on the other giant," Theodore growled vaguely.
He leaned back and pawed at the ridiculously concentrated key ring, stabbing them strategically one at a time into the lock on her cage, counting under his breath as he went through failing attempts.
"The other giant?" the reality of the trial's opening scenario hit Audette in the face. The champions would be forced to search for their detained partners which might be on one of two horrendous monsters, then they would need to find the key to their cage amongst a slew of incorrect ones.
After several minutes transpired and he'd run out of keys to try Theodore letup in frustration, his dark azure gaze intellectually far away, "While this could not have been anticipated I should have defended Malfoy this time, he has your key."
He raised one of the toothy keys close to his right eye to magnify something inscribed there at the grip, then checked three more in utter consternation, "Letters. There are letters on each of these, most of them repeating. B, I, B, A...I don't...Audette I'll have to enact brute force on one of these bones. I need you to help me search for a weak point - perhaps an ulna, spinal cord or a ribcage."
Without a clue what an ulna was, Audette's bleary eyes glittered all over the face of her cage hopelessly; each of the overlapping skeletal pieces were nearly as thick as birch logs, and the vines were wrought so tensely in place the knots were on par with half of Audette's mangled, unused necklaces.
Nott ignored his own advice, now investigatively watching a female Beauxbatons champion flickering through her overpopulated key chain to release the boy with the broken nose adjacent to them.
As soon as the champion unlocked the boy, a huge splodge of running lava hit the top of the enclosure two cells down, seeping straight through the roof and out down the meager floor panelling. Hot flames ignited in the wooden forming, licking quickly along sinewy vines like poison flowing through the arteries of the structure. The few remaining prisoners went from frantic to manic very quickly.
Audette and Theodore met eyes with increased terror. Now they would also be fighting against time before the whole cage was eviscerated into ashes.
"Oh my god, Theodore," Audette moaned depressively, shutting her eyes as her body buzzed in chilling terror that she was about to burn to death, already sensing the vast heat of the calamity behind her. The sounds of agonized cries filled the air as champions played with their key chains to save their comrades, but the increasing ringing in her ears drowned out the worst of her gut-wrenching surroundings.
Third-degree burns. Liquidation. Death.
Audette couldn't bring herself to open her eyes, already accepting her finale.
"I won't give up on you," Theodore grunted boarishly, yanking at one particular bone over and over which cracked only once then held it's integrity stubbornly against his strength. He smashed acidic potions off of the empty cage next to her to see if that might work, which it did not. With hope dwindling he resorted to shouting wandless incantations that did absolutely nothing.
The alarm and wrath in his voice was unprecedented.
He returned to her and kissed her forehead through the gap, crushing her fingers in his glove, "Audette, if I fail here today, I need you to know that I have never stopped-"
A sharp whoosh sliced through the air, blowing a gust at their faces.
"-Back off," Draco's commanding tone brought Audette back from the dead.
The world was spinning and blurry when she reopened her grateful, teary eyes.
He'd come for her.
Thankfully now two green forms were floating in front of her cage door.
Like a blond prince from heaven Draco immediately latched onto the jail house with his brown Hogwarts boots planted against the wall. He worked as fast as lightning, employing a shiny black carabiner from his belt to anchor himself to a loose exterior vine; ultimately trusting that Nott would spare attacking him under the emergency pretenses.
His pointy face was horribly bruised under his left eye, his nose was bleeding, and his typically pristine Quidditch uniform was tattered everywhere.
Whether or not Harry Potter was worse for wear after their brawl remained a total mystery.
Once he was harnessed in place with cool athleticism Draco began flipping through his own set of keys and inserting them haphazardly into the padlock, instantly growing irate with the extensive exercise, "Fuck, what sort of jigsaw balderdash is this!"
Theodore being the perfectionist that he was couldn't help interjecting - pawing at the ring around Draco's neck, "We don't have time to try them all, Malfoy! And you aren't keeping track of what you've already pursued!"
Draco's glacial eyes were caustic below his straight white locks which kept blowing into his vision, swerving on his speedy broomstick to avoid the assault, "There's no time to keep track, she's going to fucking burn to death!"
Identify the outlier, of course.
Audette repeatedly banged a flattened mitt off of the nearest bone to gain their collective attention, screaming over the blazing chaos of the collapsing enclosure, "It's a code! The letters! Find the outlier!"
To her wonderment they cooperatively floated close together, interpreting all of the repeating letters over and over. Draco read them aloud hastily, his chin collapsed against his chest to discern the necklace of keys, "T, T, S, V-"
"-U, that's a U not a V," Theodore rapidly corrected Draco as they deciphered each one, "R, E, B, A..."
They seemed to realize the solution at the same time, raising their heads to stare into each other's eyes knowingly. For the first time that year, they mirrored the long-term academic friends they had once been. It was almost heart throbbing.
"Her name - we need to deduce the letter that does not belong in her name," Draco directed aloud.
With both of their thick mitts yanking at the keys it was sheer anarchy.
The flames had now fully spread to Audette's cage and were crawling a mere few feet away. She hiked her blood splattered dress up as close to her ankles as possible, sweat from the scalding conflagration matting her sopping hair to her face.
She represented the final prisoner in the dilapidating compound, seeing as all of the other champions had successfully released their partners on time to avoid the bonfire. The giant seemed to be none the wiser nor mindful of the inferno on it's granite hip, proceeding to lumber passively onwards in a terrestrial loop now that it wasn't being bombarded by eight or so whizzing champions.
"N! There!" Theodore belted out in an eager cry.
Draco's teeth were chattering from nerves as though the temperature were alternatively subzero when he approached the padlock, his hand furiously quaking. The lock clicked and with the power of a panther he ripped the makeshift door clean off and tangled his glove in Audette's dress right in the middle of her chest, "Get on my back, now!"
He let her go to stabilize his broom sideways, welcoming her to hop on.
Audette's fingers went pearly white as her hands contumaciously clenched onto either side of the slimy frame, overwhelmed by the sheer drop at her toes as if comprehending bungee jumping from a cliff. They were at least a kilometer above the ground, each natural feature presenting at a model scale, and Audette had never flown on a broomstick.
She was stuck.
"What are you waiting for?" Draco's strained voice echoed in her suddenly empty skull, hovering there half a foot away, his glove outstretched encouragingly. The carabiner had been detached, and his bright eyes were glowing orange in reflection of the roaring flames directly behind her.
Fire had started to swallow every aspect of evidence that there had ever been prisoners there in the first place.
Yet Audette was incapacitated.
The simplest of tilts on that broomstick and she would be skydiving in no time, without a parachute.
Time ticked by at half speed for Audette - her long hair whipping in the breeze, fire creeping towards her heels as she watched the ground speeding by. The farthest reaching tendrils of her fine Edwardian dress singed spitefully, and embers filled the air around the three like unwelcome fireflies.
Theodore fastened himself to the melting structure and peered deeply into her sweaty face, guiding her shaking chin in his direction, "Listen to me Audette, I see the fear in your eyes. Take a leap of faith. Malfoy will not drop you. I trust him with this task, as should you."
The words were shocking and thus convincing, considering Theodore had spent months enraged with Draco and their blossoming romantic relationship.
Right on time before she was engulfed in a cremation level totality Theo grabbed her elbow and supported her over the short gap.
As her slipper left the platform the enclosure imploded and crumbled away from the giant - scintillating towards the base of the planet in a meteor of debris.
Theodore had Audette half on Draco's broom, half leaning on himself - three-thousand countless feet in the air.
The situation could not be any more dire, yet both boys held their cool incredibly, Draco also reaching out to grab her other arm for support.
Everyone was working with military grace - except of course, for Audette.
She shattered into delirius screams when the suspension became too real, and Theodore dug his arms below her armpits to whisper his fresh breath into her ear, "I have you, I have you. Do not look down - focus on Malfoy and where you are going to anchor yourself."
As if inflicted with anaphylaxis, Audette's windpipe just about closed up as she heaved woozy breaths in, her pervinche dress flowering like a sail in the wind. She reached her sleeved arms responsibly ahead towards Draco's body, feeling as if every muscle in her movements were not belonging to her.
When she was firmly levelled on Draco's broom Theodore's gloves remained on her shoulders to steady her until she had wrapped her arms around Draco's midriff. Straightaway she buried her nose in his pumping jugular so she would not have to look at the perilous expanse below.
"She's mounted. I'm going for Zabini," Theodore communicated perturbingly benignly somewhere on her right. He'd retracted his abutment so subtly that Audette hadn't even realized she was independently responsible for her own safety.
"Fantastic, piss off then," Draco's unfriendly snarl was barely audible as they drifted in the misty air, the stone giant's sonorous stampede fading away. The pearly hair at the base of his neck smelled like a campfire from the near escape, tickling her face as he shifted his head to respond.
Theodore's tone was venomous and resentful, "Don't let anything happen to her, Malfoy - it is with exceptional luck that Audette's survival is contingent on you completing this trial in tandem, otherwise Potter would not have been alone in his asperity at the beginning. You have two enemies in this race now - it would be wise to digest that."
Draco laughed dryly, "What an adorable thought. Potter is a hot headed dandy, and honestly I'm beyond impressed you were even able to lift off the launch pad Nott. Might want to permit Zabini to handle the duel flying."
"Do not amplify my incentive to torture you in the third trial. Perhaps I'll remove your eyeballs first, so that every sensation hencewards is heightened," Theodore stabbed back with intensifying fury in his resonance.
"Ooo I'll add blindness to my list of tendered disabilities, although you really ought to carry out your last two promises first," Draco replied in a jesting manner, his voice pitching as it always did when he was grinning impishly.
Audette grunted through her nausea to signify that there were more important matters at hand, "Control yourselves...this bickering is futile and might I add inarticulate."
They were both quiet for thirty seconds as the murky stratospheric temperatures sunk into their bones and produced serious shivering in all three.
Theodore acted on his concision, thankfully decimating the standoff. "For her sake...don't forget about the flight barrier," was all Audette heard him darkly reply, then a whoosh of air on her cheek implied he'd left.
Draco snorted to himself, and Audette was mind blown by how at ease he was on the broomstick; not at all in a rush to lower their elevation. They were in the middle of the galaxy as far as Audette was concerned, nuzzling into his neck in terror, her long hair and dress flowing from the back of his broom in wavering silk.
He detached a glove from the handle to pat her leg at his side, "You alright back there Wonderland?"
Audette shook her head silently against his throat, swallowing nauseously, her voice a mousey squeak, "Please ground me, Draco."
Draco nodded seriously, "Hang on tight sweetheart, don't make me fall for you a second time."
They were off without any other forewarning.
It was a damn good thing that Audette had slender arms, otherwise Draco's ribs would surely have been cracked from the gorilla squeeze that resulted when he leaned forward and blasted off at bullet speed.
At such a velocity the air was dastardly freezing and biting; burning her skin even through her full-length clothing, and his Quidditch robes slapped off of her back painfully.
Draco dove downwards after twenty or so morbid minutes and slowed their acceleration.
Hovering in place just above a fluffy treeline he patted her frazzled hair over his shoulder, "Look Audette, who's that damsel in distress in the sky?"
Audette tepidly rotated her face, still plastered protectively against his back, and squinted...only to squint into her own distressed emerald eyes.
A gigantic, concave square was floating in the setting sky to their right, as if integral to the rounded ozone itself, and smack in the middle of it in live format was Draco and Audette, floating there on his pricey broomstick. She looked a frightful mess - her hair tangled and her cheeks flush, and Draco was not much better with bruises and dried blood on his features.
Then it quickly faded and a new image appeared, of a Durmstrang champion in beautiful black athletic robes kneeling by a river bed, a girl not far behind him collecting twigs.
Of course. It was a broadcasting of the tournament, flipping between the champions and their activities.
"It's playing day and night, in the Great Hall so I'm informed. Special permission to be out of bed all weekend, those lucky rats," Draco commented back to her, turning his face sideways with steely eyes on her expression, "We're almost to the first arch darling, then we'll disembark. No flying past that point."
Now no more than a hundred feet from the ground - which in contrast to the previous conditions seemed minute a fall - Audette lessened her grip and sat back on the broom as he gently floated them over the trees.
To her surprise she found the sensation of gliding to be mildly lovely, even elating as a ripple of glee tickled her spine. Perhaps there was a morsel of understanding to be had in terms of appreciation for flying. Perhaps.
A wrinkle of a smile dared creep across her face as she took in the landscape whilst clung to her beaux; a pink, glowing sunset overlooked the unrecognizable world, perfectly visible from their height and strikingly gorgeous at that.
In the distance ahead a monstrous stone archway looped over a centralized river they were following along below, and further yet at least ten more kilometres was a second arch barely conspicuous. In throbbing allure even further yet along the axis was what was notably the finish line, acceptably represented as the third archway - a rainbow.
The elder rocks framing the trickling river were carpeted in vivid, lime green moss, and the trees along the riparian zone grew not one branch until several meters at a minimum.
As the fragrant, hazy evening faded into the night it almost seemed to Audette as if the worst was navigated, stomping somewhere far behind them in gravelly posture, but that assumption was positively naive.
And what had become of Theodore Nott and Blaise Zabini?