"It's been almost a full week! I can't believe you don't have your next clue!" Lily whined. Just as she'd said, it'd been almost a full week since the Yule Ball, and nothing else Triwizard-related had happened since then. I shrugged.

         "I don't know, there's not even a clue in that book that I received from my last task." I said as Lily groaned and Rose lifted her head from her schoolwork and gave us an annoyed look.

         "Maybe some of you are excused from homework," Rose said with a pointed glance at me, "but some of us actually have to study. If you're going to whine, Lil, take it out of the Great Hall to where I can't hear you. I need to focus." With that, she turned back to her Muggle Studies homework and her feather quill scratched across the page by itself. She was practicing a new charm we had learned last week, so she was really doing two homework assignments at the same time. I shook my head in admiration. What a genius.

           Suddenly, everything went black as two hands clapped over my eyes.

          "Albus!" I squealed, trying to squirm out of his grasp. "Don't do that!" He snickered as I pulled his hands off of my eyes and he sat down next to me. I shoved him and he fell off of the bench, landing on the hard tile floor of the Great Hall with a loud thud. Lily, his younger sister and my best friend, snickered.

            "Serves you right, you jerk." I muttered, loud enough for him to hear, but not loud enough for anyone else. He reseated himself next to me and lunged to tickle me, shoving me back into the table, which caused Rose's quill to drop a huge blot of ink all over her paper.

              "Alissa, stop it." She said, hugely annoyed now. She narrowed her eyes at me. "I'm trying to work. Please take your boyfriend outside if you're going to wrestle."

              Albus smirked at me again, and I punched his shoulder. He thought it was amusing that I blushed every time somebody referred to us as boyfriend and girlfriend, even though he'd asked me out and I'd said yes after the Yule Ball kiss episode, so technically we were official.

             "I was actually coming to see if you wanted to take a walk around the gardens with me." He said sheepishly. I looked apologetically to my friends, feeling terrible for ditching them, but Lily waved me off, and Rose looked like she was glad to be rid of my distractions.

             "Go have fun." Lily laughed. "I need to get one of you two to help me with my Defense Against the Dark Arts stuff, but we can do that later." Reluctantly, I let Albus pull me off of the bench and wander outside together. Winter break was officially over at Hogwarts, but it seemed like the world outside didn't know it yet. The grounds looked like something straight out of a fairytale, with a perfect golden orb of a sun reflecting on the snow, sending glittering white sparkles everywhere. Icicles hung from every nook and cranny of the building, and many older couples were hanging around outside snogging, as it was a beautiful Saturday and no one wanted to do their homework.

               Albus grabbed my hand and I childishly swung it back and forth between our two bodies as we strolled along the perimeter of Hogwarts. My breath hung in the air like a misty silver cloud on a string, suspended in front of me. My nose turned as red as Rudolph's, and kind of drippy. I shivered and Albus noticed that I didn't have a coat.

              "I'm such an idiot, geez, Al, I'm so sorry!" he gasped, wrapping me up in a warm hug. "Want to go inside?" I nodded immediately and we turned back, retracing our steps, but we hadn't gotten too far when a second-year came running up.

              "The headmistress said you would be out by the Forbidden Forest," the breathless student began, as I pondered on how that was slightly creepy. "Anyway, I'm supposed to give this to you." She held out a sealed envelope and I exchanged a glance with my boyfriend.

             "The next clue." We muttered together. With a hurried 'thank you' to the girl, we took off at a run up the hill and through the archway into the castle. Panting, we skidded through the hallways of our giant castle of a school, yelling 'excuse me' and 'pardon, coming through' at curious students who knew I was a Champion until we finally burst through the doors of the Great Hall, where my two friends were still studying.

             "Well, you look out of breath." Rose remarked drily as I slid onto the bench with Albus right on my heels. I rolled my eyes. Thank you, Captain Obvious. Without another word, I waved the sealed envelope in the air, with the headmistress' clearly visible handwriting of my name on the back.

              Lily bounced in her seat. "The next clue! Open it open it open it open it!" I drew in my breath as I cautiously opened the seal very slowly, not sure of what it might hold. A slip of parchment fell out as I shook the envelope upside down. I caught it as it floated to the ground. There was a scratchy handwriting that I didn't recognize on it, and Lily snapped in my face impatiently. "Earth to Al, earth to Al...go on, read it out loud."

               I cleared my throat and began. "The ogre has found its way to the place where no one dares to stay. In the Shrieking Shack it sleeps, take him out before he sweeps the School of Magic on the eclipse. The big tree thrashes, everything it smashes. The one who all despises is anxious for the day it rises."                A long silence followed my words, each of my friends trying to decipher each line. I set the piece of paper down in the middle of the table, and Rose eyed me. Our train of thought ran exactly alike.

               "To the library!"

~~~~~~~~

                We gathered around the table as Rose pulled book after book off the shelf. Lily finally stopped her, and after she sat down, I spoke. "Let's just take this line by line, okay? If we need to look something up, we'll figure it out as we go along." I pulled out my quill and read the first sentence out loud.

                 "The ogre has found its way to the place where no one dares to stay. Okay, so that part is pretty obvious. For this next task, I have to fight an ogre. The part about where it sleeps is in the next line, I think." My friends nodded their agreement, so I continued. "In the Shrieking Shack it sleeps..."                  "Yep, that's where it is." Rose cut in as Lily shushed her.

                   "...take him out before he sweeps the School of Magic on the eclipse." I finished, ignoring Rose's comment. "So I need to defeat him, that's obvious. School of Magic...that can only mean Hogwarts. So he's going to attack Hogwarts..."

                  "Hang on," Albus cut in, "in Astronomy the other day, the professor mentioned that there's going to be a solar eclipse...tomorrow." I grimaced, knowing now how much limited time I had to figure this out and defeat the ogre.

                  "Okay, so this ogre is in the Shrieking Shack and I need to defeat it before it attacks Hogwarts tomorrow on the day of the solar eclipse." I recapped. Rose nodded, but Lily's brow puckered on her fair skin.

                  "Hang on, Hogsmeade is closed this weekend How are you supposed to get into the Shrieking Shack by tomorrow?" Lily asked. I bit my lip, racking my brain for ideas, but Rose gestured that I should keep reading, so I resumed.

                 "The big tree thrashes, everything it smashes." I read, watching my friends closely. Rose slapped the table and everyone jumped at the sudden noise.

                 "Easy." she commented. "That line refers to the Whomping Willow. Think about it." As I thought about it, I was shocked that I hadn't thought of the tree...it was the only at Hogwarts like that. "I'm not sure how they're connected though." Rose said, puzzled. She reached for the nearest book, which happened to be the new edition of Hogwarts, A History and began madly flipping through the pages.

                How could a tree and a shack be connected? Surely the tree thrashed like it did for a reason...almost as if it was hiding something. Something such as a secret passage. Secret passages...where could we find a map of secret passages?               "Rose!" I cried, startling my friends. "And Lil, and Albus! Didn't your dads have a map given to them by Rose's uncles? Something about secret passages?"

                "The Marauder's Map..." Rose mused. "The Whomping Willow could hide a secret passage...why didn't I think of that?"

               "Right! How can I get my hands on the Marauder's Map before tomorrow night?" I asked. A sly smirk suddenly appeared on my boyfriend's face.

                "Easy. We take a field trip to my trunk. Dad gave it to me for my senior year." Lily's jaw dropped as her brother revealed his secret.

                "That's not fair! I wanted that map!" Albus laughed at her and quickly ran out of the library.

~~~~~~~

                 The next morning dawned cool and clear. I'd cracked the code with my friends...there was a special knob marked on the Marauder's Map on the Whomping Willow that had to be pushed, and then a passageway led to the Shrieking Shack, where the ogre lay. I didn't feel ready for the task, after having barely any preparation time, but it had to be done. The solar eclipse was set for ten in the morning, so I had to be ready to go by nine. After eating breakfast, my stomach turned on itself, and I suddenly regretted stuffing myself on the delicious chocolate croissants that had been on the table that morning. I wiped my sweaty palms on my robes as the clock turned to nine on the dot. I'd barely gotten any sleep the night previous, with trying to prepare for killing an ogre. Rose had brought her books to my room and she'd been a great sport about practicing spells and helping me read up on the ogre all night. Now, as she sat across from me at the Ravenclaw table decorated lavishly in blue and gold, she tapped her watch to remind me of the time.

                 "Alright." I said, standing up from my bench. "I'm ready to go." All of the eyes in the Great Hall turned to me, and I briefly scanned the Durmstrang and Beauxbatons tables for the other Champions, but they were nowhere to be seen. The stares of my fellow students chilled me to the bone and only increased the stampede of butterflies in my stomach. Rose stood up too, and from across the hall at the Gryffindor table, Lily and Albus also rose from their benches. I did my best to ignore the looks of burning curiosity as I cooly strode to the heavy oak doors of the Great Hall. I pushed them open and met my friends out in the hall, where they all gave me reassuring smiles.

                "You're going to rock this." Lily told me. "Do you have your wand?" I nodded. "Marauder's Map?" I shook my head and Rose produced it from her robes. Lily squeezed my hands. "Go get 'em, girl. I believe in you!"

                "I've got the Marauder's Map." Rose said, hugging me tightly. "Remember the spells we worked on? Remember everything we looked up? You can do this! Take the map, conquer the tree, and get a perfect score on this task! You can do it!" I took the map from my redheaded friend and slipped it into the pocket of my robes, where it rested comfortably next to my wand. Albus was next.

                "Here, Alissa, take this for the task." He said, giving me something I'd only read about. The silver threads woven in it made it glimmer in the light of the candlelit chandelier above us, and the portraits on the wall began to murmur and whisper rumors about what I was holding. Rose turned around and shushed them loudly as I stared in awe at Albus.

                "Is this...?" I trailed off in wonderment.

                "The third part of the Deathly Hallows? My dad's infamous invisibility cloak?" Albus finished. "Yeah. He gave it to me, and I want you to use it and stay safe through this task, okay?" He leaned in and kissed my forehead. "You'll be amazing. We all believe that you can do it." With a final short, sweet kiss, he gave me a little push. "Now go, I think you're already late."

                 With a gasp, I realized that it was already 9:15, and by the time I got to the Whomping Willow on the opposite side of the grounds, it might be 9:30, which left me barely thirty minutes before the eclipse to complete the task. I tucked the cloak under my arm and took off at a run, sprinting through the hallways and through the door. Out the frosty courtyard, through the archway, down the hill that though it was green in summer looked like Jack Frost had made a trip to, through the field, and to the ominous giant of a tree looming at the end of it. I skidded through a stop and wiped my red nose, already dripping and chapped from the cold. I rubbed my hands together, pulled off my gloves, and exhaled a cloud of air as I pulled out the map from my pocket. The knob, though clearly marked on the map, was practically invisible on the knobbly tree, thanks to all of the bumps on it.

                I picked up a stick from the ground and identified what I thought was the correct button. The branches flared and thrashed as I crept ever closer, trying to identify some sort of pattern or rhythm. Nothing. As I was five feet away from my destination, a branch came flying down at me and I threw myself into the snow, checking my watch. 9:26. Thirty four minutes to complete the task.

                "Easy there. Nice tree. Stay still for Mama, good tree. Good boy." I muttered encouraging things as the tree thrashed around me as I inched towards the knob on my belly, groaning as the frigid snow soaked through my robes and shirt and onto my skin. There was break in the thrashes directly above me, and I took it. I launched myself off of my belly onto my feet and ran at the tree, with my long stick preceding my body. I jammed it into the knob just as a branch swept toward me. I was inches from being impaled when everything froze and a door in the tree opened up. I let out the breath I hadn't known I was holding and slipped into the door, watching it slide shut behind me, trapping me in the tunnel.

               "Lumos." I muttered, pulling my wand out and lighting the passageway. It was dank and dim, and my watch read that I now had exactly thirty minutes after battling the tree to defeat the ogre. I pulled the invisibility cloak out and pulled it over myself, letting it settle comfortably over my body. With the map to guide me, I avoided a few forks in the road that led to other places in Hogsmeade, and followed the path straight to the end.

                I could smell the ogre before I could see it. The overwhelming stench of rotten eggs and dirty Quidditch robes hit me like a flying pegasus. I nearly gagged, and slapped my hand over my mouth to avoid making any noise. The cool tunnel exaggerated even the smallest noise ten-fold, and I froze as a bead of water dripped off of my robes onto the hard dirt path. Creeping silently with only the dimmest light of my wand to guide me, I entered the dirt frame into a small room, barely big enough to contain the ogre.

                So this is what the Shrieking Shack looks like inside, I thought to myself. I took another step and stumbled backward to avoid stepping on a giant foot. In doing so, I lost my balance and tumbled to the ground with a large noise, barely keeping the cloak covering me. The ogre turned around with a nasty sneer on its ugly face.

               "WHO DAIR?" it demanded, sniffing the air like a hunting dog. "I SMELLS FRESH MEAT." It raised its ugly fist into the air and smashed the chair a few feet away from me. I scrambled to my feet and tried to remember what I'd read.

              Ogres are stupid, I reminded myself. Brute force and no brains. Intimidation and overpowering smell. They use their sense of hearing and smell and their strength and size to overpower others. I vacantly tried to remember the spells Rose and I had practiced. I whipped out my wand, forgetting that it was still glowing, and the ogre whipped towards me.

               "I GET YOU NOW." It yelled, smashing its club not two feet from where I was standing.

               "STUPEFY!" I yelled stupidly, my spell bouncing off of the ogre's thick skin. Idiot! I admonished myself. Everyone knows that it takes a much more powerful spell to penetrate an ogre's hide! The ogre raised its club again and I jumped to the side not quickly as it pounded the spot where I had been standing, missing my head but hitting my ribcage and knocking me to the floor with a thud. I felt the metallic taste of blood in my mouth and my entire body ached with the impact. As the ogre raised the club again to try to hit me while I was wounded, I suddenly remembered something that was famous. A pair of first years defeating a troll. My best friends' parents. Surely an ogre wasn't much different.

                "WINGARDIUM LEVIOSA!" I hollered, pointing my wand at the club the ogre was holding. It flew out of the ogre's hand and I carefully directed it over the ogre's thick, stupid head, smashing it down on the ogre's cranium. It hit its mark with a resounding thud, and knocked the ogre backwards off of its feet. Not what I had hoped for, but it certainly did slow it down.

                The special spell that Rose and I had worked so hard on last night suddenly popped back into my brain, after deciding to take a nice vacation for a bit there. As I aimed my wand and prepared to say the spell, the alarm I had foolishly set on my watch beeped, notifying me that it was a minute and a half before ten, when the ogre would supposedly gain so much strength at the solar eclipse. I had to work fast.

               Changing my mind as the ogre began to slowly stand up after the blow to the head, I repositioned the club and knocked it off its feet again. I fingered my wand nervously, knowing I couldn't afford to mess up this complicated spell that we'd created.

"tiu besto estos,

somnum sempiternum,

profande dans la noctes! 

eantnunc enon redeaunt!"                As I finished my spell, which was a combined amount of old languages saying things along the term of 'terrible beast, everlasting sleep, go now to the deep of night and never return', my watch dinged ten o'clock, and the ogre roared, standing up. A bright jet of orange light shot from the end of my wand and hit the ogre directly in the chest as it raised his club and opened its mouth. An unspoken yell raised in his mouth but was never heard by the world as my spell, created by Rose and I, knocked the ogre into the next universe with sleep. The force of the spell penetrated the impenetrable skin and knocked him down and to a sleep so deep that he would never wake unless woken magically.

               Just to be sure, although I was almost positive I was over the time limit of my task, I said a quick and simple spell that bound his wrists and ankles together. I prodded him carefully to make sure my spell was victorious, and, once satisfied, stepped into the door frame and opened the door, where I was unsurprised to find most of the three school watching the door from Hogsmeade to see who emerged victorious. The solar eclipse was a sight of its own to behold, but I barely noticed, because I was exhausted, feeling sick, and I just wanted to sleep. The whole crowd let out a cheer, and I raised my hand victoriously and blacked out just in time to see my friends sprinting up the path to catch me.