J. K. Rowling All rights reserved; no part of this publication may be reproduced or

‘Reducto!’ 
he said. 
The spell shot straight through the mist, leaving it intact. 
He supposed he should have known better; the Reductor curse 
was for solid objects. What would happen if he walked 

---

542 H
ARRY
P
OTTER
through the mist? Was it worth chancing it, or should he 
double back? 
He was still hesitating, when a scream shattered the silence. 
‘Fleur?’ Harry yelled. 
There was silence. He stared all around him. What had hap-
pened to her? Her scream seemed to have come from some-
where ahead. He took a deep breath, and ran through the 
enchanted mist. 
The world turned upside-down. Harry was hanging from the 
ground, with his hair on end, his glasses dangling off his nose, 
threatening to fall into the bottomless sky. He clutched them to 
the end of his nose and hung there, terrified. It felt as though 
his feet were glued to the grass, which had now become the 
ceiling. Below him the dark, star-spangled heavens stretched 
endlessly. He felt as though if he tried to move one of his feet, 
he would fall away from the earth completely. 
Think, 
he told himself, as all the blood rushed to his head, 
think 
... 
But not one of the spells he had practised had been designed 
to combat a sudden reversal of ground and sky. Did he dare 
move his foot? He could hear the blood pounding in his ears. 
He had two choices – try and move, or send up red sparks, and 
get rescued and disqualified from the task. 
He shut his eyes, so he wouldn’t be able to see the view of 
endless space below him, and pulled his right foot as hard as 
he could, away from the grassy ceiling. 
Immediately, the world righted itself. Harry fell forwards 
onto his knees on the wonderfully solid ground. He felt tem-
porarily limp with shock. He took a deep, steadying breath, 
then got up again, and hurried forwards, looking back over his 
shoulder as he ran out of the golden mist, which twinkled 
innocently at him in the moonlight. 
He paused at a junction of two paths and looked around for 
some sign of Fleur. He was sure it had been she who had 
screamed. What had she met? Was she all right? There was no 

---

T
HE
T
HIRD
T
ASK
543 
sign of red sparks – did that mean she had got herself out of 
trouble, or was she in such trouble that she couldn’t reach her 
wand? Harry took the right fork with a feeling of increasing 
unease ... but at the same time, he couldn’t help thinking, 
one 
champion down 
... 
The Cup was somewhere close by, and it sounded as though 
Fleur was no longer in the running. He’d got this far, hadn’t 
he? What if he actually managed to win? Fleetingly, and for the 
first time since he’d found himself champion, he saw again 
that image of himself, raising the Triwizard Cup in front of the 
rest of the school ... 
He met nothing for ten minutes, except dead ends. Twice he 
took the same wrong turning. Finally he found a new route, 
and started to jog along it, his wand-light waving, making his 
shadow flicker and distort on the hedge walls. Then he round-
ed another corner, and found himself facing a Blast-Ended 
Skrewt. 
Cedric was right – it 
was
enormous. Ten feet long, it looked 
more like a giant scorpion than anything. Its long sting was 
curled over its back. Its thick armour glinted in the light from 
Harry’s wand, which he pointed at it. 
‘Stupefy!’
The spell hit the Skrewt’s armour, and rebounded; Harry 
ducked just in time, but could smell burning hair; it had 
singed the top of his head. The Skrewt issued a blast of fire 
from its end, and flew forwards towards him.