The Last Slytherin

"Ugh… My body feels numb." Neal felt the poison in his body caused by the deadly needles of the manticore.

Thankfully, he was always prepared in any kind of situation.

Neal hurriedly took out a vial from his pocket. It was green in color, an antidote to cure the uncommon poisons made from the ingredients such as fire seeds, graphorn horn, billywig stings, and chizpurfle carapaces.

He learned how to brew it, a few months ago during the end of the third year.

Before he even drank it, he felt the numbness was gone on its way. Neal didn't know the reason but it isn't the time to think about it either.

He drank it right away and felt a cool sensation in his body. After that, he didn't feel anything else. In the meantime, the fresh wound on the back is also healed on its own.

As the manticore was already before him and raised one of its paws, Neal quickly rolled back to dodge the attack and took out his black walnut in hurry, attacking with a curse-type spell, Expulso.

A burst of blue light shot from his wand and hit it dead on. Unfortunately, its body is far tougher than a usual ȧduŀt wizard. While it blasted away nearly twenty meters, the manticore was only slightly injured. But, this injury hurt its ego very much.

*Roar*

As the beast stood up on its feet and let out a powerful roar, Neal didn't hesitate to turn around and rush forward towards harry.

A moment ago, Harry was hesitating on whether to proceed forward or help out Neal but now, seeing that the beast was chasing after his competitor, Harry also decided to save himself.

He started to run at his maximum speed.

Neal was blessed with a great physique and can run 100 meters in about 11-12 seconds. On the other hand, Harry has low stamina levels and never trained his body, or atleast, never had the chance, until now. So, naturally, the distance between them gradually decreased.

But, the only issue is that Neal was about 80 meters away from the cup and Harry was only 30 meters. With such a huge distance in the gap, even a normal kid can beat a professional athlete.

Seeing Harry approaching the cup, Neal felt like he was the hare in the race of hare vs tortoise.

If he stayed there and confronted the manticore with all of his strength, he was confident that he can even kill the beast.

But, because of suspicions, he also knew that he can't let Harry touch the cup and let him teleport to the death eaters.

So, Neal felt like he was left with only one choice.

Pointing the wand at Harry's back, Neal mumbled, "Sorry but I have no choice left."

He unleashed the charm type spell, "Immobulus" (ih-MOH-byoo-luhs)

A faint light escaped Neal's wand and hit Harry's back. .

Harry was just 4ft away from reaching the cup and he was frozen on the spot. It's a freezing charm that immobilizes and stops the actions of the target whether it is an inanimate object or a living being.

As Harry tried to get out of the freezing state, Neal turned his head and shifted his arm towards behind, pointing at the manticore, "Arresto Momentum"

He unleashed the slowing charm at the beast, extremely slowing down its speed for a while.

He increased his pace, eventually reaching Harry.

Harry's eyes are moving left and right but he couldn't move from the spot. He was really angry at Neal for cheating like this. Never before, he felt hatred towards this heir of the Slytherin family.

However, to his surprise, Neal didn't leave him behind. He apologized, "sorry about that. It was necessary. As compensation, I'll share the trophy with you."

Neal grabbed Harry's arm and removed the spell from him. Before the latter even responds to his actions, Neal already grabbed the cup.

Both of them disappeared from the spot. As soon as Neal left faraway, the manticore returned its speed but there was no target.

It was at that moment, Krum arrived at the location with a wand in his hand. The manticore turned back and growled in rage.

Krum gulped a bit.

Meanwhile, Moody was observing the situation from outside. A trace of surprise appeared on his face, "both of them?"

After a brief silence, the surprise replaced with excitement, "this is even great. The two enemies of the lord will no longer see the light of the next day. I will be rewarded more. Hahaha…"

Remembering where he was, Moody controlled his expression and entered the maze to save Krum.

In the audience section, Dumbledore stood up on his feet with a smile. "The portkey was activated from within the maze. That means the winner is here. Wait a second…"

He suddenly sensed that more than one person apparated outside of Hogwarts at the same time.

"The portkey led to somewhere else? Did the ministry make a mistake on the destination?" He furrowed his brows.

Meanwhile, somewhere at little hangleton;

Harry and Neal landed on the ground.

Despite not having many experiences with traveling on portkey, Harry was familiar with floo powder. So, he was fine. Neal was also fine. However, as the landing place has a few rocks, both of them slipped a bit and the Triwizard cup fell from their hands

"Where are we?" Harry looked around while standing on his feet. If not for the fact that he landed in some strange land, he would have already started arguing with Neal for attacking him with a freezing charm earlier.

"Who knows…" Neal shrugged his shoulders as he was also observing his surroundings. One thing is for sure. They have left Hogwarts and traveled probably hundreds of miles away.

After all, even the mountains surrounding Hogwarts are nowhere to be seen. And this is anything but ordinary. Neal's heart rate increased as he felt his suspicions might have been true.

However, Neal wouldn't act on speculations. He should make sure that it is a trap or else, how would he be able to act against Moody, later. Maybe, he can even use to his advantage to gain books on forbidden magic something like the Horcruxes. Ever since he learned of it, Neal was a little bit fascinated by the idea.

So, Neal decided to check around and wait for the ambush. Even if there's nothing, then, he wouldn't lose anything, anyway.

As he checked out the place, he realized that the place was a graveyard; the black outline of a small church was visible beyond a tree on the right. There was a hill on the left with a small house on top of it.

Harry suddenly pointed at it, and spoke in a hushed tone, "I have seen it before."

"Hmm?" Neal looked at him.

Harry suddenly started to look around in frantic. He pointed at the house, "I have seen that house before too, in my dreams."

"Eh? Dreams?" Neal was taken aback by his statement. He thought, "What nonsense is this four-eyed lucky idiot is spouting out?"

"Is that so?" Neal didn't take it seriously and walked a bit forward to examine the statue until his eyes fell on the gravestone behind it.

"Thomas Riddle"

Neal's eyes were widened in surprise. He realized that his suspicions were true all along.

He said, "Potter, I think it's a trap. Get ready to leave the place."

As soon as the words escaped from his mouth, the both of them found a figure about a hundred meters away walking towards them.

"Ready with the wands and get back to the portkey," Neal said to Harry and pointed at the figure that was drawing closer.

Since it was just one man, even if it is a death eater, Neal was confident to take him down and return to Hogwarts while holding him as a prisoner.

Little he expected, two more figures are waiting in the darkness in silence from the start.

When they were only about 10 meters away, Neal's eyes fell on the hooded figure. Meanwhile, Harry grabbed his forehead and screamed in pain.

"Harry..." Neal called out his name.

It was then, a high pitch cold voice escaped from the bundle the shot figure was carrying.

"Kill the spare"

A swishing noise followed by another voice was heard from the side.

"Avada Kedavera"

A green light suddenly hit the side of Neal's abdomen. He fell to the ground, losing his consciousness.

"Neal…" Harry screamed.

After a moment, Neal opened his eyes only to see everything is white around him.

"Where the hell am I?"