"A mirror!" Harry says suddenly, and Cedric lets out the most dignified cheer a man possibly can with his mouth full of half-chewed toast, throwing his hands in the air in a victory pose. Harry grins, taking a sip of his pumpkin juice, and he leans back in his seat. "You think we're prepared?"

"We're prepared for a Sphinx, Harry, I know that," Cedric assures him, giving a nod of his head, and when he laughs he shakes himself, sweeping crumbs from the front of his robes. Harry has actually enjoyed this - over breakfast now they've merely been exchanging one riddle after another, each trying to stump the other, but Harry is pleased with how they've done thus far. The training in defence has almost been easier than the riddles; he and Cedric have played with new defensive spells and engaged in casual duels, doing their best to improve their reflexes, and now that the Second Task looms over them, mere minutes away, Harry feels well-prepared.

The nerves coiled in his stomach are nothing compared to the excitement he feels, making him jittery and making it difficult for him to possibly keep still. He feels ready for the task, and more than that, he wants it to come. He wants to get into it, wants to feel the blood rushing in his ears as he and Cedric move through the maze that the ice castle will be. Harry feels like he's had something good to work for for the first time in ages, and he can't wait to get going with it.

"You think we'll win?" Cedric asks, beaming, and Harry gives a stout nod of his head.

"Undoubtedly!" He and Cedric sit at the Hufflepuff table with a few defense texts scattered on the table surface between them, but they've not paged through a single one thus far, instead focusing on riddles and the like. Harry's just so certain there'll be a Sphinx in the castle, for no reason at all, and he's excited to face it, to face everything that comes up! Harry glances at Cedric's face for a moment as the other boy pulls his watch out of his pocket and takes a glance at it. It's old and he can see it's used, but the gold is well-polished and of very high quality, as is tradition for a young wizard of age. For a long few seconds, Harry wonders if he should share what he and the others had figured out about Bagman and the goblins.

Harry's had nearly a month to tell Cedric about it, but each time he'd considered it he'd held off.

Cedric, raised by a straightforward man like Amos Diggory and surrounded by Hufflepuffs all the time, is just too moral, and too trusting, Harry's pretty certain. What if he goes to the Ministry, to the Aurors, too soon? What if he gets killed as a result?

But then, what if Bagman wants him dead for the competition?

Harry drums his fingers on the underside of the table, tapping his foot on the ground. He doesn't like not telling Cedric something that might well affect him heavily, but nor does he want Cedric to fuck things up worse than they already are by being a good Hufflepuff and trusting the Ministry to do something well.

"You okay there, Harry?" Cedric asks, and Harry nods his head, standing and adjusting his robes. The great hall, which is crowded with people hurriedly eating their breakfast, goes abruptly quiet, and Harry feels hundreds of eyes on the back of his neck as he and Cedric begin to move towards the door. Then, he hears a loud whoop from the Gryffindor table, recognizing the loud voice of Seamus Finnegan, and a cheer goes up from all of the Hogwarts students. The Beauxbatons and Durmstrang lingerers seem startled by the sudden noise, and Harry and Cedric grin and wave at the others as they jog out of the entrance hall, through the courtyard and down towards the lake.

The benches from the stadium have been moved to stand around the lake edges, but even with the huge walls the colosseum creates, Harry can see the silvery spire of the castle with its brightly coloured flags hanging from around the crenellations. Harry and Cedric share a grin, and then they duck into the blue tent opened out on the frost-covered grass. Fleur and Viktor are already present, settled in seats: Fleur is straight-backed with one pretty leg delicately crossed over the other, and Viktor is slouched in a chair, absently playing with a piece of loose thread on the sleeve of his robe.

"Everybody ready?" Ludo Bagman asks delightedly, clapping his fat hands together. Bagman is met with stony silence from Krum, Fleur and Harry (though perhaps not for the same reasons), and an awkward tension from Cedric. He glances between them, shifting from one of his feet to the other, and then he coughs and holds out a bag. "You'll just pick out your flag to see who goes first. Rita Skeeter was meant to be here getting your pictures taken as you went, but her photographer says she's gone missing."

"Quel dommage," Fleur says in an icily sarcastic tone, and Harry stifles his laugh as she leans forwards and reaches into the bag. First comes out a dark flag with the Durmstrang crest on it, and then Beauxbatons, and then Hogwarts. Each champion is to run through the maze individually (or dually) and complete it as fast as possible: the task is finished when the champions have their hands on the flags. Bagman stresses that the flag must be grasped by Harry and Cedric at exactly the same time, so Harry suspects immediately that the flags are enchanted to be portkeys - they'll probably magic the champions down to the judges' table to get their scores.

"So," Fleur says, giving Viktor a short wave as he makes his way out of the tent, rolling his odd, round shoulders and making them crack slightly as he straightens his neck. "From now, we wait." Bagman, thankfully, makes his way out to the colosseum to watch the tasks, leaving a lower Ministry official at the tent to usher them out as Krum finishes. The three of them wait for what seems like forever, and Fleur's pretty face is pale with quiet anxiety as she waits in her seat.

Despite the energy he and Cedric had shared that morning, Harry doesn't feel any interest at all in making conversation. He sits in mostly silence, running defensive spell after defensive spell through his mind, remembering the crucial jinxes, curses and countercurses, spells and charms and enchantments that might just come in useful. He feels ready, but a part of him resents how little time he's had to study in comparison with Cedric, but it's nothing for him to think about now.

Now, he has to think about winning.

"Good luck, Fleur," Cedric says as she stands to go: his smile is so warm and the words so genuine that Fleur doesn't even bother to apply some witty response. She merely smiles weakly, gives the smallest of nods, and flows from the tent in the graceful way she moves anywhere. As the young Ministry man opens the tent entrance to allow Fleur outside, Harry hears a fragment of speech from a speaker using the Sonorus Charm, but he only hears the barest snatch of sound before it's cut off by the closing of the tent flap.

Harry and Cedric share looks as the silence fills the tint again, but they don't break it. They sit in the quiet until the Ministry man says, "And you, lads. Good luck."

Drawing their wands, Harry and Cedric walk out of the tent. A walkway has been set up leading into the colosseum around the lake, and the two of them walk under a wooden archway and out to the beach around the lapping waters.

Suspended at the edge of the lake is the great vessel of the Durmstrang ship, its black sails tattered and moving in the breeze and its great, dark hull barely brushing the water's surface. The rest of the lake is completely dominated by the great, silver-blue structure, crafted of icy blue brick and almost as high as Hogwarts itself, though not nearly as sprawling and wide-reaching. Hundreds upon hundreds of people are seated in the benches in the colosseum around the lake, and Harry is conscious of them in a way he never was with the first task.

But how will they see them?

The announcer - a fat little man with a green bowler hat obviously modelling his style after Cornelius Fudge - has a Sonorus charm on against his throat, and although his voice is loud and echoing across the flat surface of the water and towards the icy castle, Harry doesn't really hear him. He and Cedric share a glance, and they walk down towards the little dock on the lake.

A wooden bridge has been laid out between the dock and the castle entrance, and Harry and Cedric stand together with their backs straight, facing Ludo Bagman and Amelia Bones. Bones' hair is slightly damp, and she looks to be in ill-humour, but Bagman is predictably in very good spirits. "Okay!" he says, clapping his hands together and rolling his shoulders. He reminds Harry of the bulldog bobblehead his Uncle Vernon had received a few years back as a reward from his insurance company. "Now, lads, you'll be going into the castle. It's almost like a maze! The plan is to get up to the tower on top and retrieve your flag! It's very important that the two of you grab it at the same time!"

Harry feels the slightest inkling of relief - if both of them have to grab it at the same time, it's probably a portkey or something, and it can't affect one of them and not the other. Whatever Bagman has planned with the goblins, it must be planned for the third task. At least, he hopes.

"Your audience can see you through the walls of the castle, but you can't see them - no cheating, now!"

"How are we supposed to cheat?" Harry asks dryly. Bagman laughs, nervously.

"Well then!" he says, clapping his hands together again, a little more nervously this time. Harry narrows his eyes as he looks at him, but before he can say anything to Bagman, Amelia breaks in.

"There'll be a count in a few moments. When you see sparks shoot from our wands, you may begin," Amelia says cleanly, and Harry doesn't think he imagines the way her lip curls when she glances at Bagman and ushers him towards the panel of judges waiting on the shore.

Cedric and Harry stand together in the middle of the bridge where a starting line has been drawn in chalk. Already, staring forwards at the closed, icy doors of the castle, Harry's trying to think of the best way through.

"We should have Summoned our brooms," Harry whispers. "We could fly right up to the tower like that. Thirty seconds, fifty points."

"We wouldn't get fifty points," Cedric says, giving Harry a little grin. "Karkaroff would give us eight points at most." Harry sniggers. Behind them, Harry hears a loud bang and the sound of sparks, and Harry and Cedric bolt forwards.

"Bombarda!" Harry yells, flicking his wand hand forwards without stopping the pound of his sensible dragonhide boots on the bridge beneath them, and the ice shatters like thick glass, cracking in place, but the doors don't come apart.

"Incendio," Cedric says, making a circular shift of his wrist Harry hasn't seen before: as a flaming umbrella spans wide from Cedric's wand like a Bubblehead Charm, Harry feels the heat of it on his face as the ice melts at speed, leaving a heavy, rushing puddle around Cedric and Harry's feet. It runs off the edges of the bridge, and Harry distantly hears it dripping into the lake below.

Inside, the castle is brightly lit, cold winter sunshine coming in through the glassy walls: Harry and Cedric share a glance before the two of them step inside. Their boots make quiet, echoing clatters on the cold, ice floors, and the chill of the castle's corridors hits Harry hard as he steps over the threshold. He wishes he'd worn his cloak as well as his robes, but it's too late now, and he and Cedric move forwards and through the entrance hall of the castle. They both creep forwards with their wands held up in front of them, and neither of them bother, as they thought they'd have to, to cast Lumos.

For the longest time, they walk as speedily as they can, shoulder to shoulder, through the halls of the castle, each of them scanning the icy walls, but nothing seems to jump out at them. Nothing at all.

It's when they approach a huge, sprawling staircase that something finally happens: he and Cedric step up together, shifting their soles on the too-smooth surface of the ice, when from the top of the stairs comes a mighty roar. The thing is huge, sandy-coloured with a great red mane, and with a scorpion's tail towering over its head. Harry stares, mouth open wide, as the Manticore rumbles down the stairs towards them; Harry swings back his wand and yells, "Bombarda!" as he throws it forwards again. It hits the Manticore in its light-skinned, human face, and the thing lets out a surprisingly high-pitched scream.

It wriggles in the air, twisting and changing its shape as it spins and struggles, and it screams out even louder.

Cedric, pale-faced, whispers, "It's a Boggart." And then, louder, "It's a Boggart." He raises his wand to cast at it, but the thing scrabbles away, throwing itself out of a thin window with a loud smash.

"Are you scared of Manticores?" Harry asks, trying not to smirk. Cedric, in the gentlest fashion possible, cuffs Harry upside the head - Harry barely feels it. Cedric's cuff hasn't got anything on Snape's, or any of the Slytherin upperclassmen's. He feels more like he's been smacked by a bag of feathers than by a badger.

"Come on, Harry," Cedric says. "Let's get going." After that, it's one thing after another - birds spitting acid throw themselves at Harry in a cloud of green and black, and Cedric spells them into flames; they fight off a little crowd of Red Caps that descend from one of the ceilings; worst of all, when walking down a long corridor several floors up, the ground drops out from beneath Harry and he hits a dark pool of freezing water. He struggles in the sudden, even worse chill, fighting off the sudden, grey hands on him and casting spells through mouthfuls of water, repelling Grindylows as far away as he can manage.

"You alright, Harry?" Cedric says sharply when he finally pulls Harry up out of the water, gasping for breath, and Harry nods his head, kicking a Grindylow in the chin and hearing its neck crack as he drags himself up onto the corridor floor again. He mutters a thank you when Cedric spells him dry, and the two of them keep on moving.

"I think that's the tower," Harry says, pointing to a spiral staircase, and Cedric nods his head. They move forwards, ready to make their way upwards-

And that is when the Sphinx appears.

It saunters into their path and sits directly before the staircase, leaning back on its haunches and watching him and Cedric with an expectant expression. Harry grins, glancing at Cedric, and they both step forwards.

"Well," Harry says, putting his hands on his hips. Immediately, he realizes how ridiculous he must look, and puts them at his sides again. "Have you got a riddle for us, Ma'am?"

"We've been studying up," Cedric says earnestly. The Sphinx glances between them, arches an eyebrow, and then yawns. It has an awful lot of teeth.

"No," the Sphinx says airily. Harry is stopped short, and he stares at it, tilting his head.

"Eh?" Cedric says. For a second, he sounds just like a boy from Devon. "I mean- er- I don't understand. You don't want us to answer a riddle?"

"No," the Sphinx says again, simply. "Tell me a joke."

"What?" Harry demands. "What do you mean?"

"Make me laugh," the Sphinx says, drawing out the sound of the word between its teeth, and Harry turns, slowly, to look at Cedric. Cedric's expression is completely perplexed. "I've told enough riddles today."

"Why don't you just tell us one you told earlier?" Cedric asks. "Please."

"No," it says. "I'm bored of riddles. Tell me a joke."

"I don't know any jokes," Cedric whispers.

"Nor do I," Harry says. It's a lie. The problem is that all of the jokes coming to mind are... Well. They're exactly the kinds of jokes that get told in the Slytherin common room. The Sphinx stares out, resolutely, and it sets its great jaw. "Er- well. Okay. So- so this man, a blind man, walks into a pub. And he's having his drink, and he asks if anyone wants to hear a Hufflepuff joke." Harry hears Cedric's head whip to the side more than he sees it. "And the barman says, "Sir, I won't lie to you, but I'm a Hufflepuff, there's a Hufflepuff scarf over the fireplace, and there's a good twelve other Hufflepuffs here in the bar with you. You might want to rethink that." And, after a pause, the blind man says, "Oh, aye, I won't bother then. Not if I'm going to have to explain it that many times.""

"Oi!" Cedric says. "Right, Madam, um- Why do Slytherins always cross the road twice? Because they're doublecrossers!"

"Right!" Harry snaps. "What do you call a Hufflepuff with one braincell? Lucky!" Cedric curls his lip. "What do you call a Hufflepuff with two braincells? Pregnant!" Cedric is stiff as a board, his hands clenched at his sides, but before he and Harry can begin arguing, the Sphinx breaks in.

"What," it asks quietly, and with a light curiosity, "is a Hufflepuff?" Harry presses his lips together.

"It doesn't matter," Cedric says. "Or the Slytherin thing, actually. Um- I don't... Do you know any jokes that aren't...?" Harry shakes his head slowly, and then Cedric suddenly jumps.

"Oh, oh, Ma'am! Okay, so, how does a train eat?" The Sphinx stares at Cedric. "Do you- sorry, do you know-"

"I know what a train is," the Sphinx says archly.

"It goes- Chew chew!" Cedric all but whistles the words. There's a short pause, and then, the Sphinx lets out a quiet snort of laughter. With that, it saunters past them, and allows them the space to get up the stairs, and Cedric and Harry run forwards as one.

---

"Grand score of 44!" Hagrid says, clapping his hands together as Harry and Hermione troop down towards his hut. Harry's shoulders are down, his hands in his pockets, and he stares down at the dew-stained grass. Cedric and Harry, upon being given their scores, had walked in completely opposite directions. Who ever bloody heard of a Sphinx wanting to hear jokes anyway? "Well done, Harry! Well done!" Harry mutters a half-hearted "Cheers," and he steps into Hagrid's little garden when Hermione pushes open the gate for him.

"Where the chickens, Hagrid?" Hermione asks. Hagrid tuts, making a face as he opens up the door, giving Fang a rough scratch behind the ears.

"They're dead," he says. "All them and my two roosters - nasty little sickness called Feathergrote went through two of them, and I had to put the rest down. I'll have to wait until the new year to get any more in, I expect - you need to let the lingering bits of it fade away. I'll give the coop a good clean out, of course."

"How'd they get it?" Harry asks, frowning slightly. "Is that a common illness?" Hagrid shrugs his shoulders.

"Egh, common enough," he says dismissively, shaking his great head. "It's just a real shame. D'you want a cup of tea, Harry, Hermione?"

"Yes, please," Harry says at the same time as Hermione, and the two of them make their way into Hagrid's hut.