Chapter 362: The Clock’s Strikes Six

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I would like to thank my beta, Awdyr, for his help in this chapter.

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17 April 1995, Olympus Academy, Greece

Harry stood amongst his fellow Hogwarts Champions feeling oddly apprehensive about the whole task. It was weird, to say the least. He had fought so many other monsters. Hell, he'd just faced Voldemort and made him run away in fear, a wizard whose name people still feared. And yet, there was something haunting about the task before him. Mount Olympus was probably the most magically dense location he'd ever been to, and the way space and time were folded made him truly think that he was stepping into a different world entirely, one with entirely different rules.

If he had a choice, he wouldn't have chosen this task to compete in, especially how unknown it is, but Daphne was resolute on her quest for the Golden Apple, her quest to save her sister, and that meant that he had to be there to protect her. His cover as Eddie Carmichael had worked so far, but he couldn't exactly have an impressive display of magic while staying hidden, and considering what was at stake, he didn't think his cover would last for long.

To be fair, it was a shot in the dark at best, which was destroyed the moment the headmaster of Olympus Academy revealed the reward, and with it, got Daphne's undivided attention. The original plan was to stay hidden, get eliminated quickly and disappear afterwards. The disguise, while useful, was mostly to hide from Grindelwald. From what he could gather, the Dark Lord's divination was vision-based, and a disguise would theoretically trick him. Of course, it was enhanced by his connection to his alternate selves, each acting as nodes to make his visions far more powerful than they had any right to be, but they were all still vision-based. Gellert Grindelwald wasn't likely to find out that Harry was still alive if his only interference was in someone else's skin.

He was still working on a way to neutralize his divination, which was, by far, his most powerful asset, and that alone would be an amazing boon. He'd been making some headway with his analysis of dimensional magic and a bit of Alchemy, but he was still far off pulling it off. His Arcane Hearing wasn't something that could help him with that, as divination doesn't really leave any traces of active magic.

Still, all things considered, he was prepared to lose his disguise if Daphne became in danger. It wasn't like he did anything illegal. He was a delegate of Hogwarts and was allowed to compete, the rest was just semantics.

Harry turned towards his fellow champions, trying to do his best not to roll his eyes. For some absurd reason, McGonagall had gotten Diggory, Johnson and their teammates, while talking about the four houses of Hogwarts representing the school or something equally as absurd. They weren't exactly bad mages, but their performances in the tournament were pretty disappointing all around. Honestly, the Weasley Twins would have been a better option, even if they would have probably tried to prank them halfway through the endless mountain.

Of course, Diggory spoke first, "Alright, this is it. I know that we'll probably go our separate ways later, but for now, let's just stick together. Just because there's one winner, doesn't mean that we have to do this alone. Until we eliminate the other contestants, it'll be better if we stick together."

The older boy's words made sense if only he wasn't obviously lying through his teeth. If he couldn't really analyse Diggory's emotions with his Arcane Hearing, he would have believed the older boy. Unfortunately, everything about him radiated that he was fully planning on betraying them. There was a certainty in it that worried Harry a bit. Diggory was different. His sound was a bit stricter, and more ordered, and a lot of his self-doubt was gone. Normally, it would be a good thing, a sign of growing up, but something just didn't feel right.

Johnson spoke up, "Fine. We'll stay together at least until tomorrow morning. We already planned everything until then. Greengrass, is the jumper charged?"

The Blonde nodded, "Charged and ready. We'll fire it the moment the task starts. They ought to give us a head start."

As if waiting for the signal, the cannon fired, and the task began, with the champions confidently implementing their plans to get up the mountain. The French champions enchanted some kind of glowing floating horses, which they rode up, the Durmstrang delegation enlarged a pretty large boat, similar to the one they owned, which slowly started to float away. Similarly, the Spanish used flying carpets to fly up, the Nebelheim students some weird small boat each, and the Romans built a chariot that was enchanted to fly.

They were really taking advantage of the fact that they were allowed to bring whatever enchanted items they wanted, which was why Harry didn't even need to remove the necklace that hid his true appearance. While this did simplify things, it actually wasn't a good sign; it meant that they expected the task to be hard enough that 'cheating' by flying was impossible. Harry already could tell that fundamental magical and physical properties were just different out there. The mountain had no peak, it was infinite, and that meant that going up really didn't help matters. It wasn't exactly a race, but the Greeks must know enough about the mountain to have a better guess than anyone else.

Most of the schools seemed to have prioritized getting up the mountain as quickly as possible. It was probably a mistake since they needed to conserve their strength. From the sounds of it, the task was probably going to last days at least, and getting tired early was bound to end in disappointment.

As he expected the Greeks seemed to take a slower pace but were actually far warier than Harry expected. Their leader was by far the more powerful of them, and Harry would have remembered his song, using his Arcane Hearing, so he definitely wasn't part of the delegation. It wasn't exactly a song, but more of the sound of waves crashing into the sand. He was probably a water elemental and a very powerful one at that. He was definitely one to watch. Why the Olympians didn't put their, by far, strongest wizard in the tournament was beyond Harry. They probably thought that it was beneath them, or the boy just needed to stay in the country for some reason. He wasn't judging them, but it was still an odd choice.

Yet, what was stranger was how the Greek Champions were acting. They had opted to take the slow approach, ready to react to danger at any moment, despite their obvious advantages since they knew far more about the mountain than anyone else.

The water elemental simply turned towards one of his teammates, who just raised his hand. The ground rumbled and the earth floated from underneath them before quickly rising to the sky and vanishing round the mountain somewhere.

Taking that as a sign, Daphne activated Diggory and Johnson's plan, which ended up with them being launched upwards into the air. They each summoned their brooms to them and continued flying up.

The launcher was supposed to be their 'head start', and the broom's manoeuvrability would get them to explore the mountain far more efficiently than making a floating platform. If it had been a normal mountain and the goal was to reach the peak, then this could have been a pretty good plan if they shielded themselves from the weather, that is. But that wasn't exactly the case, space was spread out differently, it was more like a warped sphere, with hundreds of small imperfections.

Still, Harry didn't exactly have any better plan, since he had no idea what was going on in the mountain. He had tried to use his growing skills in Divinations but ended up with a pretty horrible headache for his efforts. Even his Arcane Hearing didn't really guide him since the entire place seemed to be filled with hundreds of different pieces of magic, which was very hard to differentiate from one another.

They soared through the thinning clouds on their brooms, the wind whipping past before Harry heard a sharp noise with his Arcane Hearing, which was followed by a strange whistling sound filling the air.

Harry glanced over his shoulder just as dark, fast-moving shapes shot through the mist behind them.

"What is that?" Daphne shouted, eyes narrowing as she tried to make out the source of the noise.

Harry couldn't see whatever it was properly, only knew that there were a lot of them, and they were coming very quickly. He squinted, catching glimpses of wings, but these weren't ordinary birds. The creatures were moving too quickly, their feathers flashing unnaturally in the fading light. Then, one of them swooped by, close enough for him to see—the feathers weren't feathers at all but sharp, metallic blades.

"Stymphalian Birds!" Harry realized, his voice tight with urgency. "They're made of metal! Get down, now!"

But it was too late. Before they could descend, the birds attacked in a coordinated strike, bronze feathers raining down like arrows. Their brooms jolted violently as they dodged, but the birds were too fast. One cut across Johnson's broom, causing it to spin out of control. Diggory had gone all one wolf and dodged the feathers pretty impressively, trying to get to the mountain, probably to build some kind of shelter.

Harry immediately made a shield around Daphne, just in time to stop dozens of metallic feathers banished expertly and conjured a rope that was able to grab Johnson from falling to her death. He animated it to stay connected to his broom and then took out some pieces of metal from his pocket around him that transmuted into spheres, quickly enchanting them to negate the bird's very own magic. Harry dodged as one of the birds tried to ground him and threw the enchanted spheres in one of the birds' mouths.

When the enchantment activated, the bird just froze entirely, its magic being negated completely, before falling to the ground, probably being pulverized by the impact. Harry threw a few others at the coming birds, which fell to a similar fate. The rest of the birds tried to attack him at once, only for Harry to quickly transmute the spheres, into a giant net charged with his negating magic. He levitated the net and charmed it to be physically unbreakable, turning it into a shield that protected them.

It was just in time for Daphne's shield to break and he redirected a metallic feather that could have killed her. However, it still hit her broom, destroying it as well. He caught her with another rope, but the weight was a bit much and he had to get down safely.

They landed in a small flat space near the mountain. There was a cave nearby that they could use as shelter while they took a breather. Looking back, Harry saw that Diggory was landing towards them as well, the coward. Still, since the birds seemed to stop attacking them, Harry made the net stop at the entrance, just in case they attacked once more.

"Is everyone alright," he spoke.

They all looked around one another, and Johnson spoke up, "We're all good. That was some quick-thinking Carmichael. Didn't know you had it in you. What was that?"

Harry decided to bend the truth a bit, "They're rusting balls. I bought them in case the Romans tried to get after us or something. It's supposed to work on all metals, so I took a chance. I'm glad it worked, and after that, I just transfigured a few into a net to protect us."

It was a bit of a white lie Harry came up with in a vain effort to hide his identity. Instead of casting any form of impressive magic on his own, he would make small balls that he would enchant and say that he bought them before the task. After all, it was an allowed strategy, and it was perfectly possible to portray 'Eddie Carmichael' as the master of 'being prepared for anything'.

The older girl smiled and was about to say something, only for Daphne to interrupt her response, sounding shaken by the experience, "What the hell was that? We could have died!"

Diggory nodded, "Yes, something isn't right."

"You're right. I don't think this task is as safe as the others. I don't even think the Academy have any control over this place. We can't assume that we'll survive things, just for being here."

And once more, Harry's Arcane Hearing started to warn him once more. Something was waking up inside the cave, something big and pretty magically powerful. This was, of course, followed by a roar, and a wave of fire, coming from the depth towards them. Harry quickly made a hole through the ceiling, and redirected the fire towards it, missing them entirely.

They ran out of the cave, almost as quickly as it came in, thunder roaring in the background. With a blasting charm, Daphne got the entire place to cave in, hoping that it would stop whatever it was that was coming.

However, something was wrong. Harry couldn't put his finger on it, but there was something that he was missing. What was it?

Thunder roared once more. Oh, right, it wasn't raining.

Harry turned and saw a giant head looking at them, its neck turning around the mountain. It was joined with another and then a third. Each head was gigantic, almost twice the size of the dragons that attacked the express. They were serpentine in nature and Harry quickly recognized what he was facing, a fucking Hydra. It was so big that Harry had assumed that magic was that of the mountain itself. It was coiled around it, like some kind of giant serpent, and even if Harry was facing only three of the heads, there were probably dozens, if not hundreds all over the mountain.

Diggory sent some spear of light at one of the heads, which splashed and did absolutely nothing. Well, all three heads hissed at once, and their maws opened with lightning crackling inside, ready to be unleashed.

Well, that explained the sound of thunder. He knew that he was missing something. At least that was over, now he had to deal with the fucking Hydra. They weren't even two hours in. Who the fuck would ever come up with this shit?

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AN: So, finally, I got started with the task. I wanted to make it something a bit different and go a bit deeply with Greek Mythology. I hope this chapter came out like I wanted it to. It was fun writing something a bit more eventful, especially compared to how the past few chapters were a bit on the slow side. I hope you like it and, as usual, please let me know what you think and if you have any suggestions.

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If you want to support me check out my patréon at https://www.patréon.com/athassprkr

I tend to upload drafts of early chapters on there to get people's opinions of them so you can read up to 20 chapters ahead as a bonus.

Thank you guys for your support in these hard times.