The Second Task

It was hot. Too hot.

Uncomfortable and groggy, Amelia attempted to push the comforter of her four poster bed off of her body to relieve some of the heat that was bearing down on her usually icy skin, but when she moved to do so, she found that her hands did not come in contact with her bedspread. Instead, what she felt in her hands was granular, hotter even than she was, and ran through her fingers when she didn’t hold it tight enough. Disoriented as she was and unwilling to open her eyes just yet, it took Amelia nearly a full minute to identify what she had just felt.

That’s… sand. Amelia’s mind identified, though it was almost immediately met with a barrage of contradictions from her subconscious, convinced as she currently was that she was in the dormitory at Hogwarts Castle. There was no sand in her bed. There wasn’t even a speck of dust anywhere in her room, much less enough of it to fill both her fists.

The disconnect with what she was seeing with her minds’ eye and feeling with her fingers finally convinced Amelia to open her eyes, though she closed them again almost immediately to block out the piercing light that made her irises strain to contract quickly in response to the new stimulus. After blinking several times Amelia was able to sit up and keep her eyes open long enough to begin to identify, though nowhere near understand, where she was.

For as far as she could see, Amelia viewed nothing but sand. The tan, grainy substance was beneath her, around her, and in her hair. And the heat had not been a figment of her imagination either; the temperature was absolutely sweltering, a kind of dry heat that immediately made Amelia’s throat feel like she hadn’t drank a drop in days. Hundreds of thoughts and questions immediately formulated themselves in Amelia’s mind and began to compete for her attention, bouncing around the inside of her skull like a pinball machine.

Where am I? Why am I in a desert? How did I get here? It is hot. Who could have brought me here? Did I accidentally end up here? Where is ‘here’? It is so hot. Is there a reason I am here? What am I supposed to be doing here? How long have I been here? It is so incredibly hot. Where are my things? Where is the person who brought me here? How long will it take me to find him or her and hex them into oblivion? And why is it so bloody hot?

STOP!

The barrage of thoughts and questions had grown too much for Amelia, whose rational mentality had finally taken over and ceased the competition of thought and replaced it with silence. She had closed her eyes again, though this time not against the bright light but against having too much stimulus at one time. Amelia was an ordered person who liked to handle things one by one, like checking things off a to-do list. This much mental and physical stimulation happening simultaneously threw her off balance and made her feel out of control, and for a control freak like Amelia, this was a problem. A rational approach was much more likely to work in her favor instead of sending her spiraling into a panic attack, which is why she now started to do what she did best: overanalyze.

Just focus on the first question. Obviously you are in a desert. There is no other topography made entirely of sand. Okay. Next question.

But the ‘why’ of it was a little bit trickier. She could think of no reason why she would have been dumped in the middle of the desert, and as far as she could remember she hadn’t accidentally placed a Saharan portkey in her bed. The last she could remember she had collapsed into her four-poster and immediately fallen asleep from exhaustion.

Needing more information before she could come to any conclusions about the ‘why’ aspect, Amelia reopened her eyes, confident now that she could handle the sensory input because she had a handle on the mental input. As she was re-examining her surroundings for clues, however, a different type of sensory input sent a shock through Amelia’s system even greater than waking up in the middle of a desert had.

“Oh good, you’re awake.”

At the sound of the voice, Amelia nearly wrenched her neck turning around to see from where – or rather, whom – the sound had come from. But as ill prepared as she had been for the desert wake-up call, this was definitely the trump card. Standing behind her, looking even more out of place than she did, was a human-sized badger wearing, of all things, a tail-suit. His tie was bright yellow, his shirt crisply pressed, and his cufflinks…

…bore the insignia of the Hufflepuff Crest.

And suddenly it clicked. Looking up at the badger with friendly smile spread across his black and white features, Amelia was able to answer nearly all the questions that had bombarded her earlier because she had recognized one simple piece of information: this was the second task. With that knowledge, Amelia was able to figure out why she was in the middle of a desert wearing the clothes she had fallen asleep in – for once it was helpful to have fallen asleep in her clothes rather than changing into pajamas – with nothing but her wand and a talking badger.

Unsure yet what one says to a talking badger, Amelia lifted herself from the ground and brushed the sand from the back of her jeans and shirt, always keeping the creature in view. She wasn’t sure yet what to make of him, but he did provide several useful pieces of information. This was a task, and it was the task of Hufflepuff, the one Amelia had least been looking forward to.

Amelia had known going into the tournament that the task of Hufflepuff would not be her strong suit. Ravenclaw would be a breeze – no one had ever doubted she was sorted into the correct house – and even Slytherin didn’t faze her because that task would test cunning and self-reliance, two areas that Amelia rarely struggled with. Gryffindor was somewhat questionable – she wasn’t exactly a risk taker – but in Hufflepuff, she would be lost. Friendship, loyalty, and patience… well, let’s just say she had a lot of work to do in those arenas.

But here she was, and knowing the nature of the tournament, her actions were being watched and critiqued. After another minute of contemplation, Amelia finally managed to form a sentence that she thought might be acceptable to say to a non-primate talking mammal, though how anyone would have the experience to say for sure was beyond Amelia.

“I suppose you’re my… guide, of sorts?” Amelia said hesitantly, her hand at the back of her neck in one of her nervous twitches.

“A very astute observation, my dear,” the badger said, still smiling in her direction as though they had known each other for a great deal of time and had overcome any sort of conversational barriers that might exist, “My name is Edmund, and I am your guide. And you have been sleeping quite some time now, so if I were you, I would be guiding myself in this direction,” he added, indicating toward a sort of path in the sand that appeared only at his suggestion.

Dwelling only for a moment on how the path had come into being, Amelia took her eyes from the new landscape feature and returned them to the Badger, still unsure whether she wanted to trust him. He could be a façade or a trick, meant to test her in some way, but logic fought against that idea. This was clearly the test of Hufflepuff, and they weren’t exactly known for their skills of deception. Still, Amelia was not altogether comfortable with trusting a creature she had just met, but really, what choice did she have?

“Um yes, thank you,” Amelia said as she hesitantly took the badger’s suggestion, her lack of eloquence in correspondence showing. Even the badger was a better conversationalist than she was.

As Amelia began to walk down the path that the badger had indicated, the creature followed behind her, humming a little ditty Amelia had never heard before. It’s upbeat nature was a little disconcerting to Amelia, and more than a little annoying, but she knew better than to insult the one person who seemed to know what he was doing out here, because Amelia certainly didn’t. How long she could keep up her tolerance for the incessant noise was questionable, but for now she ignored it. The humming kept her from having to make any real conversation with her companion, for she wouldn’t have known what to say. Of course, she had many, many questions for Edmund, but it seemed they would have to wait until ‘the song that never ends’ ended.

After what seemed like nearly an hour of walking, but could easily have been more or less, Amelia saw something in the distance. It started out just a line on the horizon of endless sand, but as they got closer Amelia was beginning to make out what looked like an enormous crater. When the pair was within 100 yards, Amelia could see that her speculations were correct. While the desert itself continued in all directions around the canyon, the thing itself was at least two miles wide and 50 yards across. Although Amelia looked questioningly at Edmund, hoping he was going to say something about the impending obstacle, the badger maintained his incessantly happy humming right up until they reached the very edge of the cavern.

Looking down into it, Amelia could see that it was at least as deep as it was wide, so there was definitely no going through it. Seeing no bridge and getting no sage wisdom from Edmund, Amelia simply made the decision for them and started heading to the right, intended on walking around the perimeter and just avoiding the thing altogether. But before she got five steps, she was interrupted.

“Maybe we should wait,” Edmund said from behind her, the only blessed thing about his suggestion being that him speaking meant that he had to stop humming. Amelia turned once more to face him, throwing her hands up in the air as she spun and looking at him incredulously.

“Wait for what, exactly?” Amelia asked, more snarky than she probably would have been if she had remembered that she was being watched by a panel of judges. Although she had managed not to strangle the overly-happy creature all the way here, her annoyance with him had clearly been building, as evidenced by her short tempered response to his suggestion.

“Wait for something to happen, of course,” Edmund replied, not even sounding phased by her barbed comment, his big eyes still smiling down at her.

Amelia wanted to retort with something condescending, ending with ‘of course’ to mock him as she probably would have anyone else in this situation, but she remembered at the last second to hold her tongue for the sake of the task. Taking a deep breath to keep herself from exploding, Amelia let it out slowly, choosing her words carefully for what she was about to say.

“Well, Edmund,” Amelia began, focusing on keeping her voice level, “You are welcome to wait for ‘something’ to happen, but in the meantime, I am going around. Maybe we’ll catch up later,” Amelia added, slipping up slightly in her attempts not to sound sarcastic with the last phrase. She was already growing tired of this task and the dreadfully boring surroundings. The sooner she got out, the better.

And so Amelia turned away from the badger once more and back in the direction she had originally chosen, walking around the perimeter. She was surprised that Edmund did not stop her, but when she checked over her shoulder he was merely standing where she had left him, his hands – or paws? – held behind his back, looking very much like a butler. Amelia was contemplating the mental image of Edmund serving ale to the table of poker-playing dogs in a painting she had seen once when all of a sudden the next step she took did not fall on solid ground.

What the… Amelia’s mind immediately asked, demanding to know the reason why her right foot had not landed like all her other footfalls, but before she could even finish the thought she realized what had just happened. Not only had her foot not landed as all the others, but it hadn’t landed at all. It was still sinking progressively and Amelia was beginning to feel the wetness of the sand on her calf. This was quicksand.

Shit! Amelia immediately reacted, clearly more profane in her mind than she would ever be allowed to be out loud. Reaching for her wand in the waistband of her shorts, Amelia immediately began to run through a list of spells that could possibly help her in this situation. But what defense did one have against quicksand? She thought briefly about freezing the quicksand, but then how would she get her foot out afterward? Sinking faster – both her feet were beneath the quicksand now – Amelia had to think fast.

”Depulso!” Amelia shouted, attempting to use the banishing charm to work her way out, but to no avail. Pushing the sand away only worked for a few seconds before it began working its way back up her lower limbs. pCave Inimicum was just as easily defeated, though that had been a long shot to begin with.

Running out of both time and ideas, Amelia twisted herself to look for Edmund, who was still standing where she had left him, looking right at her but not moving from his place. Although it killed her to admit that she needed help – fierce independence was a staple of her character – Amelia didn’t see that she had many other options. If she waited much longer her mobility would be severely hindered and the chance of her casting any type of spell, even if she could think of an appropriate one, would be slim to none.

Here goes nothing…

“Edmund!” Amelia called, somewhat softly the first time despite her panic, mostly because she was embarrassed at having to ask for help from someone she barely knew, and admitting that if she hadn’t been so stubborn in the first place she wouldn’t even be in this predicament.

“Edmund help me, please!” Amelia shouted again, this time louder. The fear of disappearing beneath the sand was now for fierce than the fear of admitting defeat, and the panic was evident in the pitch of her voice. But no sooner had she admitted her need for help did Edmund appear beside her, covering an absurd amount of distance in such a short time, but Amelia didn’t dwell on it because she was so thankful to have him near. Without even a comment about her choice not to listen to him, Edmund extended a paw toward her and Amelia grabbed hold of it. He was careful in his work, pulling her slowly so as not to stress the quicksand into pulling her deeper, but eventually Amelia felt the downward pull on her legs ease as Edmund pulled her safely out of the pit.

Breathing heavily, though Edmund wasn’t, Amelia lay panting on the solid sand, sweating and exhausted. Edmund did nothing more than dust himself off, still unfazed by her behavior. Although he could have rubbed it in her face how right he was, he didn’t. Instead, he merely waited for Amelia to recover from her panic and stand up once more, brushing herself off again, though the sand was pretty much a staple of her appearance by now. She was about to thank Edmund for his help, but the badger spoke first.

“Well, shall we?” Edmund asked Amelia after she had recovered, not showing a hint of any emotion other than contentment or happiness. Amelia had no idea how the creature managed to be so pleasant in such harsh conditions – not to mention in her company, which hardly ever put anyone in a good mood – but when she looked in the direction he had gestured, Amelia actually felt her mood lighten just slightly.

A bridge had appeared.

A direct passage across the ravine, rickety and wooden, but a bridge nonetheless. Amelia stared at it incredulously, thinking it to be a mirage, but no matter how hard she stared, the bridge remained. After assuring herself that it was indeed there, Amelia looked back at Edmund, who seemed to be smiling to himself about her reaction, but he just as easily could have been smiling about something else. He was a smily bugger.

“You might have mentioned we were waiting for a bridge,” Amelia grumbled to herself as she rolled her eyes discreetly and walked past Edmund back toward the bridge, who followed behind her. She had not forgotten his help, for which she was grateful, but he could have been a bit more direct in his description of what exactly they were waiting for. Clearly, Amelia had failed the test of patience.

As she approached the edge of the canyon where the bridge began, Amelia looked down the length of it, inspecting it for safety. At a closer distance, it was clear that this bridge was not the one she would have wished for if given the choice. The spans between the boards were long and the planks which were there seemed thin enough to crack at half her weight. Despite these shortcomings, though, the support system along the sides of the bridge was made with rope that seemed like it had weathered no storm.

“I don’t know about this,” Amelia said tentatively to Edmund, whose presence she could feel behind her, “I don’t know that we’ll both make it across alive.”

“Perhaps you should invest in some improvements?” Edmund replied, this time as a question rather than a command. Curious, Amelia turned to face him, and alongside where the black and white creature stood was a pile of wooden planks and a toolbox. The way Edmund was gesturing toward the pile of supplies, his statement suddenly made much more sense. Amelia moved toward him and picked up one of the planks, and with it in her hands she could see that it was exactly the same length as the span of the rope bridge. Putting two and two together, Amelia could see what was intended of her in this part of the task.

Sighing, Amelia grabbed a stack of the planks and tucked them under one arm, picking up the tool kit with the other. She took these supplies to the edge of the bridge and then went back for another trip. There must have been 150 planks in the pile, and after several trips back and forth to the edge of the canyon, Amelia paused to catch her breath next to Edmund, whom she looked up at while panting.

“Would you care to help with any of this?” Amelia asked, somewhat annoyed that he had been standing there in his perfectly spotless suit while she went back and forth, obviously working much harder than she would have cared to given the conditions, the long walk just to get to this point, and the fact that she had nearly been swallowed by quicksand.

“I would care to, but I don’t think it would prove anything,” Edmund answered cryptically, the smile that seemed permanently attached to his face making the statement even more confusing to Amelia, who after a few more seconds of rest resumed her task of transporting the supplies.

When the task of moving the materials was completed, Amelia set to work attaching each of the planks to the rope bridge, one piece at a time. The work was slow going. Each of the boards was only about a foot in width, which made for slow progress. Amelia was tempted, for the sake of time, to place the boards further apart, but it would defeat the purpose of rebuilding the bridge if she didn’t do it correctly. The further she got across the canyon, the longer it took, for each time she wanted to attach a plank she needed to go all the way back to the beginning to fetch a few more.

When the final plank of the bridge was tied into place, Amelia felt as though she wanted to collapse. She was tired, sore, and calloused, and despite all the time that had passed since she started her journey, the sun had not moved from its place directly above her. Amelia could feel the sunburn on her cheeks and shoulders, her fair skin easily succumbing to the ultraviolet rays that would likely leave her with blisters when this was all over.

But she had made it across the gulch. As she stood up from her hunched position that she had been in for the past few hours, Amelia took the last step to get to the other side and relished in the feeling of solid ground. She had been swaying on the rope bridge for so long, her perch precarious at times and downright dangerous at others, reminding herself not to look past the current plank and definitely not to look down, that now that the sand that she had so hated earlier felt like the greatest reward.

As she collapsed to sit on the sand, Amelia watched as Edmund crossed the bridge she had spent so much time constructing, his pace slow and methodical as he crossed without fear or hesitation. Not once did any plank shift or move beneath him; Amelia’s knots had been solid. His pace matched that he had been keeping the entire journey, not having to strain himself to make his steps smaller or larger to get to the next plank. And for a reason the redhead could not explain, Amelia felt something that felt a lot like being proud.

“Are you ready to move on?” Edmund asked after a short while, having reached her side of the canyon and now standing over her once more.

“Yes,” Amelia managed, standing slowly despite the protest in her aching muscles. This time, Edmund did not wait for Amelia to lead the way, but instead walked beside her as they both resumed walking on the path, leaving the canyon, the toolbox, and what was sure to be many miles behind them.

After another few hours, Amelia was becoming utterly exhausted. It was getting difficult to lift her feet anymore and she was so covered with sunburn that with every movement her skin protested about being rubbed against any other part of itself. Amelia had attempted a sort of shading spell earlier, but the desert sun was so bright that it wasn’t worth the effort to keep it going. Instead, she was just dragging herself along, wondering for what seemed like the thousandth time how much longer this desert extended.

“I need to stop and rest,” Edmund stated, the first either of them had said for several miles. Amelia had made a few small attempts at conversation along the way, but Edmund was so cryptic and Amelia so inept at conversation that none of it had lasted very long. At his words, Amelia stopped walking, and Edmund stopped with her.

Turning to face him, Amelia hunched over, hands on her knees despite the protest of her sunburned skin. The creature did not look at all as though he needed a rest; despite all the walking and dragging out of quicksand, there was hardly a wrinkle in his suit. While she looked like she had spent weeks in this desert – though it could surely have been no more than 12 hours or so – his grooming was impeccable and he hadn’t showed any signs of slowing until this point.

How can he possibly be tired? I didn’t see him building a bridge across a canyon today…. Amelia’s mind grumbled, though for once she managed to bite back the sarcastic comment. Clearly the last time she hadn’t done what Edmund suggested things hadn’t exactly worked out in her favor and she wasn’t one to make the same mistakes twice.

“You can go on ahead without me,” Edmund said, taking a seat on the sand and looking up at her, “I don’t want to slow you down.”

Amelia thought for a moment at this proposal: walking ahead on her own could put her closer to where she was going, but to be honest, she wasn’t altogether sure where that was. It seemed as if the path went on forever without any discernable reasoning for its direction. But if she stayed, that would cost her time in the competition, though what bearing that might have on her score in this task she couldn’t say. It was difficult to know what was best in this situation, but judging by what had happened so far and the near death experience Edmund had saved her from, the decision didn’t actually turn out to be as difficult as she thought it would be.

“Thank you for the offer, but I think I’ll stay,” Amelia said, pulling her wand from her pocket and scooping up a bit of sand in the other. With a wave of her wand, she transfigured the sand into a cup – convenient that glass was made of sand in the first place – and then filled the cup with water using Augmenti. When she handed the cup to Edmund he drank heavily from it, his usual elated smile replaced with something that looked like satisfaction, though it was hard to tell given his furry features.

Amelia repeated the process to quench her own thirst, but no sooner had she tipped the last of the glass’s contents into her mouth than did Edmund stand back up, extending his empty glass to Amelia, who took it with a questioning look.

“Well, I think that should do it,” Edmund said brightly, although they had only been stopped for a minute, maybe two. Surely he was not satisfied with such a brief rest? If he had been so exhausted to have stopped their passage after so much distance without pause there must have been a reason.

“Are you sure you don’t want to rest a bit longer before we go on?” Amelia asked hesitantly, fighting the urge to just go along with him because it would get her closer to what she wanted. For once, the badger seemed to be suggesting something that she actually wanted to do, which made her overly-cautious to begin with.

“Oh we’re not going on,” Edmund said easily, rising from the sand to tower above Amelia again, surprisingly large for an animal so closely related to rodents.

“What do you mean we’re not going on?” Amelia asked, failing to keep the incredulity out of her voice. Taking a rest she could deal with, but stopping altogether was not an option. She had to get to the end of the task. She had to prove to her parents and to her teachers and to herself that she could do things without explicit instructions or rules of engagement; she could think for herself and was capable of making her own decisions and living with them. That was what entering the tournament had been about in the first place.

“We’re not going on…” Edmund repeated, though this time accompanied by a sly smile that indicated that there was something more, which followed after the briefest of pauses.

“…because we’re here.”