"Scuba diving gear, skip two challenges," Cedric decided quickly.
He didn't choose the seemingly better "gillyweed" but instead opted for Muggle scuba diving equipment. The reason was that this way, he could maximize his points: 20 points for the equipment and 60 points to skip two challenges. This way, he would only have to complete one challenge to reach the Black Lake and rescue the submerged person.
"Unexpected but reasonable choice," Bagman nodded, handing the scuba diving equipment to Cedric, helping him put it on and giving him the accompanying booklet.
When Cedric opened the booklet, he realized it was an instruction manual for the scuba diving equipment. For a moment, Cedric didn't know what to say.
From a certain point of view, the organizers were quite considerate.
After Cedric made his choice, Krum approached the table. After considering for a moment, he decided not to take the gillyweed but to skip a challenge using his points.
He had already devised a strategy for moving underwater, so he didn't need to spend points on buying items. Instead, he would use his points sparingly to skip a challenge.
Krum made this decision also because Fleur still had 32 points, which meant she could afford both the gillyweed and skipping challenges. If Fleur could only afford the gillyweed and couldn't skip challenges, Krum wouldn't hesitate to buy the gillyweed and make things complicated for Fleur.
Often, competition depends not only on the upper limit but also on the lower limit.
Amid the deafening applause, the three champions began their journey. Cedric would start on the third challenge, Krum on the second, and Fleur, who purchased the gillyweed, would start from the beginning.
Bagman led the three to the entrance of the wooden cabins.
As they approached, they could see more clearly: it was a three-story building. Fleur was left on the first floor, Krum on the second, and Cedric was taken to the entrance of the third floor.
"Push the door, and there you will have your challenge. Of course, if you prefer to breathe some fresh air outside, that's perfectly fine," Bagman encouraged Cedric with his characteristic smile. It wasn't because Cedric was a British wizard or because his father knew Bagman; it was simply that Cedric winning the Triwizard Cup would benefit Bagman more.
Yes, the head of the Department of Magical Games and Sports was open to betting again.
Cedric definitely wouldn't waste valuable time for fresh air. He just adjusted his attitude, pushed the door, and entered the third floor of the wooden building.
Once inside, the sight was somewhat unexpected for Cedric. He expected to find a guardian or door wizard who wouldn't let him pass without defeating him, or perhaps strange and magical creatures guarding the way out. But once he entered, he realized it was just an empty room.
To call it a room didn't seem quite right; "courtyard" might be a more appropriate description. The world beyond the door looked more like an outdoor courtyard, with artificial rocks and pine trees, and looking up, you could see a clear blue sky. However, it was precisely this clear blue sky that made Cedric understand that all of this was a magical illusion: in the Scottish Highlands in February, there would never be such good weather!
The door behind Cedric closed at some point, and the event officially began.
Cedric took out his wand and placed the scuba gear on his back, carefully entering the courtyard. There was nothing unusual in the courtyard, and the rocks and pine trees gave no clues.
However, at the base of a pine tree, Cedric found a sundial buried in the ground, with a silver needle. Cedric used his wand to touch the sundial, but found nothing unusual. The needle on the sundial seemed to be moving, but a part on the right side was stuck by the pine's roots.
After some investigation, Cedric felt that this was just a decoration for the initial location. His gaze crossed the courtyard and settled on the wooden door at the end of the courtyard. He felt that the real challenge should be behind that door.
He approached the door, took a deep breath, and opened it. He didn't know what awaited him, but he knew the challenge was about to begin.
Behind the door was a room that was decorated like a common living room, with sofas, stools, and a hanging lamp, and with the red and gold color combination, it looked very similar to the Gryffindor common room.
Not only did Cedric think so, but the students watching from the field had the same impression. However, the Gryffindor students were quick to debunk it and claimed that while it had a similar style, it wasn't the original Gryffindor common room.
Seeing the decoration and considering that there were three floors in the cabin, Cedric made a bold assumption: the first and second floors might be designed based on the Beauxbatons and Durmstrang houses, respectively.
Now he realized that it was worth spending those 60 points. He didn't know much about those two schools, and if he encountered unfamiliar styles, he was likely to get stuck, and that would be disastrous.
At the end of this "Gryffindor common room," there was also a similar door. Cedric approached the door with a trial attitude and pushed it.
It turned out that the door was locked.
Clearly, this was a challenge and not a display of Hogwarts' decoration. Cedric drew his wand with little hope and tapped the lion-shaped lock.
"Alohomora!"
But the lock didn't respond.
Cedric: ...
A riddle? He thought as he looked at this "lion's head." Suddenly, he remembered the Ravenclaw entrance ring his girlfriend mentioned during their chat.
Could it be that this lion's head will work like the Ravenclaw entrance ring and require guessing the riddle? Considering Gryffindor's style, could it be something like having to win a real fight to pass?
With a cautious look, Cedric touched the "lion's head," but nothing happened.
Cedric was perplexed: this is going to make me look stupid!
Indeed, his careful and cautious appearance was quite comical, and the stands were already filled with energetic laughter.
After his guess proved wrong, Cedric began to pace around the common room. Finally, he found something unusual.
"There are too many lion elements here, aren't there?" He noticed that there were many lion statues, each about a meter tall. He counted a total of thirteen, which was a lot, even considering that the lion was Gryffindor's symbol.
Cedric winced in pain and immediately began examining the lion statues carefully. He quickly discovered that the bases of these statues could be rotated.
After a careful observation, he looked toward the door through which he had entered this room. Next to the door was also a lion statue, which was slightly larger than the others inside the room.
Cedric first pushed the sculpture, but he realized it didn't move at all, which was different from the other statues. Cedric immediately realized that this sculpture had some issue.
After pondering the knowledge acquired in class and combining it with knowledge of the magical world, Cedric tapped the lion's head with his wand.
This was common knowledge in the magical world: all sorts of magical mechanisms could be activated with a wand, like the back wall of the Leaky Cauldron. The wand was an important item for distinguishing wizards from Muggles, so using a wand as a means to activate a mechanism was the most common way.
Not surprisingly, the lion's head that was hit spat out a small ball of golden and red fire. The fire floated slowly and flew toward the mouth of another lion statue not far away, then changed direction and continued flying until it reached the wall and disappeared with a burst.
Cedric looked at the statue in front of him and then at the lion lock on the door on the opposite side, and suddenly he understood.
Next, he continued adjusting the angle of the lion statue until the fireball finally flew toward the door lock. After hitting the lion's head, the lion lock shuddered and transformed into a handle.
Cedric approached and pulled the handle, and the door opened.
Behind the door, there was another room decorated in bronze and blue tones, clearly the "Ravenclaw common room." In this room, Cedric also saw several bronze statues of ravens and a door with a raven's head.
Although it was a bit repetitive, for Cedric, it was great to be able to solve two challenges with the same logic. So he tried the same thing again, but this time, when the golden and red fireball hit the raven's head, it didn't change at all.
Cedric: ???
He tried again, but this time, the result was the same as before.
Cedric fell silent: it seemed that the challenge designer wouldn't allow him to solve two rooms with the same logic.
So, he carefully examined the room in front of him and finally noticed something unusual. The fire in the fireplace in this room wasn't yellow but blue!
And blue was Ravenclaw's color.
Cedric tried again, this time deliberately letting the fireball enter the fireplace. The fire didn't disappear but turned blue. Now, the door to Ravenclaw would also open.
After the "Ravenclaw common room," came Hufflepuff's.
However, this time Cedric fell silent upon seeing the four small badger statues on the ceiling.
The ceiling was about six meters high, and he couldn't reach it even standing on a table.
Just one table wouldn't be enough... Cedric thought for a moment and then offered a simple and straightforward solution: why not use two more tables to reach it?
The tables in this room seemed quite sturdy, not of poor quality that would break with a single step. Plus, Cedric knew a useful spell that could reinforce these furniture pieces, making them capable of bearing more weight.
Cedric was a practical person, so he did what he thought at that moment. He approached one side of a table, stuck his hand underneath, and pushed hard.
Pushed hard!
Hard?
The table didn't budge.
Cedric: ???
Then he realized that no matter how much force he applied, the table in front of him wouldn't move an inch. Even if he used magic, he couldn't move these tables from their place.
"Epoximise!" Cedric realized that all the tables were held in place by the Permanent Stick Charm.
He felt a sense of despair and then realized what he had to do.
He waved his wand and transformed the cushions one by one into something he could use to stand on. He stacked them layer by layer until he could reach the badger sculptures on the ceiling.
When the orange flame opened the previously locked door, Cedric showed a smile on his face. This room was testing the transformation skills of the brave! Those wizards who couldn't transform the cushions into footholds would be trapped in this room.
Fortunately, his transformation skill was quite good!
Seeing how Cedric overcame the challenge, Dumbledore had a facial spasm and an expression that was a mix of laughter and tears.
"What's wrong?" Madame Maxime keenly perceived Dumbledore's change in mood.
"Well... Cedric used a... well... rather unexpected method to solve the riddle," Dumbledore said with a laughing yet helpless expression.
"What's the correct method to solve the riddle?" Madame Maxime was quite intrigued.
"In the room, there's a support, when you pull it down, the room flips, and the badger sculptures on the ceiling will be on the floor... that's why I put the Permanent Stick Charm on all the furniture that could have hurt someone," Dumbledore explained, shrugging a bit helplessly. "Students always find strange and surprising ways to solve problems."
Madame Maxime heard this and couldn't help but laugh, and the atmosphere in the stands became cheerful.
"But if you thought the challenge only had that, then you were very naive." A gleam of light shone in Dumbledore's eyes. "The real fun is yet to come!"
While the two headmasters chatted, Cedric had quickly solved the last Slytherin-themed room and opened the door.
Behind the door was a corridor, but when he reached the end of the corridor and opened the door, he was stunned.
He had returned to the courtyard where he started, nothing was as he expected!
The young wizards in the stands also exclaimed in amazement, no one could understand why this was happening.
From their point of view, Cedric had always been moving forward, and the wooden building he was in was also curved from the outside, not a closed ring.
Why then did he return to the starting point? It could only be that the corridor was playing tricks on him, or there were more than four rooms in the challenge...
Cedric quickly ran through the courtyard and entered an extremely familiar room; it was like a small Gryffindor common room.
Everything returned to the starting point, and he stood stunned in front of the lion sculpture.
Seeing the familiar layout, he couldn't help but curse: the designer of this challenge must have some mental problems!
The room's arrangement was identical, even the angles of the lion sculptures hadn't changed.