Mischief Managed Y2 Part 2: The Truth of the Tournament

Chapter Sixty-Nine: Sacrifices and Showdown

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"Shhh, pipe down, Emma," Lucinda shushed the excited girl who already seemed to be inventing ways for the showdown between the Slytherins-plus one Ravenclaw- and the foreign students to go down over the orb.

Regulus was just immensely glad his brother was nowhere in sight. They all reached the portrait and took seats in front of it. They were missing the best event of the year for this, well everyone but Greggory who had opted to watch the tournament instead, much to his cousin's outrage. That was probably a large part of why Lucinda was giving Emma a hard time. Reg honestly hadn't expected any of them to miss the third and final Triwizard Tournament as he would never order such a thing, especially with the traps securely in place. If Reggy hadn't grown up in such a hostile environment he probably could have left the orb and enjoyed the tournament. However, the youngest Black had learned never to leave anything to chance. Sirius didn't follow through with plans and it always backfired on him. And Reg had learned most of life's lessons from Sirius' mistakes. Wearily he sat down, Lucinda and Emma's beginning of an argument cutting off abruptly at the rather dejected and loud sigh that escaped him.

"Are you okay, Regulus?" Lucinda asked respectfully, sitting beside him.

"I just hope we aren't missing the task for nothing," he concluded, wondering if he should just trust in the many pranks it seemed Sirius and his friends had left to guard the orb.

"We won't miss it," Emma explained with a broad grin, which didn't diminish in the slightest at Lucinda's resulting scow. Regulus bit back a smile, not for the first time finding the almost delusional Ravenclaw amusing. "My good friend Davey, who is quite a bit older than us as you lot know, found a very useful spell..." Emma began with a gleam in her sapphire eyes, like always embellishing and drawing out her statement for dramatic effect.

"Good for him," Lucinda replied flatly.

"Actually good for us," Emma shouted in glee as she proceeded to produce a shimmering book from her bag. They had all brought a textbook along with them since they had expected they would need to distract themselves from losing out on the fun going on outside. Instead when Emma opened the book Regulus and Lucinda gasped, able to see the Quidditch stands. Past that, far below on the pitch, that an oddly familiar sounding announcer was explaining about, the space was divided into individual cubicles. Apparently each champion needed to enter one and pass whatever test was inside or best whatever beast to proceed to the next one. The voice went on to explain, which was clearly seen by looking at the pitch, that the number of available paths to the cup would dwindle as the champions proceeded and once one champion walked out of one of the invisibly marked-off sections no one else would be able to enter it.

Regulus took in the pyramid shape to the layout of the arena. There were eight starting paths that the champions could choose from and once they got through their room of sorts they would have to choose between one of two other areas and navigate a trail through the arena based on the prior track they had chosen to take. As they proceeded further into the pyramid layout their options dwindled, until only two of the three champions would be able to pass through the last two pens, leaving the third champion unable to move forward. Regulus was impressed by the complexity of the task and listened eagerly as it was explained at the end of the path, the tip of the pyramid, each champion would be confronted with a sphinx that would give them a riddle they had to nonverbally answer.

It sounded like there should be more to that bit of the description, but no further information was disclosed. He could just make out a small creature in the last boxed-in spot, which seemed to be the objective the champions would be racing to. Reg wondered if the champions had to mime the answer to the riddle or use spellwork somehow. He also had no idea where any of the younger students who passed the little challenges were located. Bitterly he hoped they hadn't actually gotten to participate at all. Or even better, maybe the winners had simply been tricked into cleaning up the arena once all of this was over.