Hogwarts: Don't call me Wandmaker

Chapter 397 The Maze and Help

"So, what do you think? Don't you think this place is great?" Bagman said cheerfully to Siren and Fleur.

"What you see now is not the final form. When the last project begins, Hagrid will turn them into twenty feet tall. You will see a completely new and stunning arena."

"By the way, I think you can probably guess what we're going to do here."

"A maze?" Furong said.

“That’s right!” Bagman said happily, “It’s a maze. The third project is also very simple. The Triwizard Cup is on a high platform in the middle of the maze. Whoever gets it first is the champion.”

Bagman spoke casually, but everyone present knew that things couldn't possibly be that simple. There were bound to be many traps waiting for them on their way to the center of the maze.

Sure enough, Bagman quickly continued:
"Hagrid provided a whole bunch of animals... and the professors also set up a lot of spells that must be broken... It should be a lot of fun."

No one doubted the truthfulness of his last statement. It was certainly funny, but only to the audience.

For the Warriors, it was simply an obstacle they had to overcome with all their might.

Bagman then emphasized the order in which they entered the maze.

The player with the highest total score, Siren, will enter the maze first, followed by Fleur, and finally Krum.

“Oh, right.” Bagman said as if he had suddenly thought of something, “Kakarov thinks that Krum and Fleur’s scores are very close, so they shouldn’t have too much time apart when they enter the maze… The referee has been considering whether to approve this proposal.”

Fleur's face turned ugly again; this was clearly directed at her, or rather, at Beauxbatons.

"So, you play Quidditch like this too?" She stared at Krum and said meaningfully, "If the score difference is small, you tie for first place, like during the Quidditch World Cup?"

Krum, who had been silent all along, suddenly turned bright red.

He understood Furong's meaning all too well.

Furthermore, during this year's Quidditch World Cup, his Bulgarian team lost to Ireland by a very narrow margin, missing out on the championship. Fleur was clearly using this incident to allude to him, telling him that a loss is a loss, regardless of the margin of victory.

Ludo Bagman's expression wasn't good either, but when faced with Fleur's questioning, he still managed to explain, "This...this is the Triwizard Tournament, it's different from Quidditch."

“Hmph…” Furong sneered and said another sentence in French.

The three people opposite them acted as if they hadn't heard anything.

"Alright, if you have no other questions, let's head back to the castle. It's still a bit cold here..."

Furong didn't say anything, turned around and left, not forgetting to pull Xilun along.

“Watch out for those three.” As she walked off the field, she said to Xiren, “That Ludo Bagman must have some kind of secret with Durmstrang. His previous actions were too obvious; he was helping Krum win.”

“Ms. Maxim is already looking for evidence of their cheating. If possible, I hope you can persuade Headmaster Dumbledore, since this matter also concerns Hogwarts. You certainly don’t want to lose to Durmstrang in such an unfair way.”

“Even if they cheat, I won’t lose,” Celen said.

Furong gave him a somewhat stiff look.

“Fine, whatever you want,” she said. “But I, including Beauxbatons, certainly won’t agree to that ridiculous proposal. Ms. Maxim worked so hard to get me second place, how can we let them just cancel it out so easily?”

This time, Xilun remained silent.

Because Furong's second place wasn't exactly honorable either; even Karkaroff never gave anyone a score of 0, only Maxim did.

The two parted ways when they arrived at the castle gate; Fleur wanted to return to the carriage in Beauxbatons. In the hall, Siron deliberately took out the Marauder's Map and studied it for a while.

In the direction of the Quidditch pitch, Bagman and Karkaroff's names remained together for almost ten minutes before separating.

Apart from this, everything else is normal, and everything at school is the same as usual.

When Xiren returned to the common room, many people were already waiting there. He had just walked through the passage behind the portrait of the fat lady when he was pulled into an armchair by two hands.

"How about it?"

So what exactly is the third project?

Does it still need to be decrypted?

……

A group of people gathered around, asking questions all at once.

Incidentally, after the second project ended, the Gryffindor golden egg puzzle activity also ended, and Hermione naturally guessed the most accurate answer.

But she absolutely refused to take the 100 Galleons, or rather, the reason she got involved was so that Siron could save that money.

Later, Celeste asked his grandfather Garrick to get two spellbooks from over a hundred years ago, which Hermione gladly accepted.

But the others didn't know any of this; they just felt it was a pity and wanted to play it again.

“This time there’s no need for decryption,” Siren said. “Bagman directly revealed the contents of the third project, which is navigating the maze.”

"A maze?" someone asked. "The Forbidden Forest?"

“No, they built a maze at the Quidditch pitch,” Celen said, giving a brief account of what had happened.

"I can't wait."

"Me too."

Fred and George exchanged a glance and spoke at the same time.

Challenges, battles, and magic – that's the three-way competition they envision, not sitting on a platform staring at the water for an hour.

“We’re going to prepare a secret weapon; you should be able to use it,” Fred said, and despite it being late at night, he and George immediately ran out of the common room.

“I’m going too.” Hermione stood up. “You just said Hagrid prepared a lot of magical creatures, right? I can roughly guess what they are. The library has ways to deal with them.”

As she spoke, she glared at Harry and Ron beside her.

“Hey, it’s almost curfew,” Ron said. “Why can’t we help out tomorrow? Does the Hogwarts library close tomorrow?”

“To be precise, curfew isn’t until half an hour away.” Hermione glanced at the time. “Anyway, you don’t have anything to do right now, do you?”

“I…” Ron clutched the wizard chess piece in his hand, wanting to tell Hermione that he actually had something to do, and it was very important.

But Harry had already stood up, so he could only sigh helplessly and say, "Okay, we'll go to the library with you."

……

(End of this chapter)