Standing at the entrance, head tilted to the side slightly, the young woman gazed at the maze, appraisingly. The anxiety that had been present at the first task was still there, though for different reasons. This time she had her wand. No...her anxiety now was about what was in the maze.

After the last task, she wasn't too fond of plants of any kind. So entering a maze made entirely out of a plant was a bit unsettling. For all she knew, her death awaited her just inside the maze's walls.

Bundled up a little more than she had been the last task, though not so much that she wouldn't be able to move around quickly. Aleksandra shifted her arm, feeling the wand in it's wrist holster before flicking her wrist easily and allowing the polished wood to slide smoothly into her hand. A small cloud of mist forming as she sighed, and slowly walked into the maze entrance.

After a few cautious steps you can see a pale light up ahead. In your current state of mind, you might imagine all kinds of strange creatures waiting for you, but the four-legged thing in the middle of a small, overgrown clearing of sorts is comfortingly mundane and ordinary: a sturdy wooden table. The clearing itself doesn't appear to have another exit. That's odd, but something to worry about later.

On the table, in a row neat as you please, stand five potions. They each emit a faint glow, bathing the clearing in multi-coloured light. In front of them, there is a small piece of parchment. Directly past the table; a tiny door.

Tentatively, she walked through the hedge maze. Eyes darting about, waiting for something, anything to jump out at her. The fact that nothing had yet to emerge from the bushes didn't ease her mind, but she was slightly distracted by the pale light in front of her.

The closer she got, the easier it was for her to distinguish the item. A table. Her eyes scanned the clearing, settling on the table when she reached it. No way out of the clearing, but she didn't allow her mind to focus on that right now.

She glanced sceptically at the potions sitting on the table, a small frown crossing her features as she picked up the parchment and read it. Then reread it again. Hm. This could go really good or really bad. Sure, she was good in potions, but that didn't make her feel any more confident in picking the correct potion.

Reading the parchment again, eyes flicking past the table to the tiny door, she gazed at it for a long moment, musing over how she would do this. The first logical thing to do was test the potions on someone else. Her eyes flicked around the clearing.

Nope. No guinea pigs.

Guess that meant she would have to test the potions out in other ways. Trading the parchment for the first potion on the right, she opened the bottle and held it up at eye level. Testing to see if the potion was emitting any kind of steam. Then she carefully sniffed it to see if the potion had a distinctive scent that would give her any hint as to the kind of potion it was. The woman let one drop fall on the table. Basically, she was trying to find any distinguishing characteristics about the potion in the orange bottle.

Nothing notable appears to happen as the drop of potion hits the wooden surface. There is, however, a faint scent of peppermint in the air.

Nothing happened to the table when the potion made contact with it, but it did smell of peppermint. Hm. While she let the scent fad, the woman mused over what kind of potion could be in the orange bottle.

After a moment, she placed down the orange bottle, repeated the steps with the other four bottles in order. Letting a drop of each potion hit the table, checking the scent and color.

The drops of potion from the purple phials produce a small hissing noise as they hit the table. From the blue and green phials, no sounds, no scents, no clues are uncovered.

Hissing could not be good. Those two potions, probably the same potion, would not be going into her mouth. The other two phials gave her nothing. Hm. Picking up the parchment again, she reread it, attempting to match a potion with each.

One to make your spirits fly. "The orange phial."

Two will make you want to die. "The two purple phials."

That left two phials. One to shrink and one to grow. Which only left the green and blue phial. Trust you not the phials' size. The one that shrinks is in disguise. So......the green phial?

Sandra didn't know how useful the other potions would prove the further she got into the maze, so she placed one purple and the orange phial in her left pocket along with a cushioning charm. So they wouldn't break. In her right she placed the blue phial and a cushioning charm in her right pocket.

The only thing that sat on the table now was the lone purple phial and the parchment that she had memorized. Green phial in her hand, her hazel eyes wary as she opened the bottle. She was sure she had picked the right phial, but she was still unsure. Only one way to know now.

Bottoms up!

You must be tiny for this trip... It's a Shrinking Potion! And a strong one, too. You become smaller and smaller until the phial itself is taller than you are and the table looms over you like a mountain. Now the overgrown grass has replaced the hedges as an obstacle to struggle through.

But what trip? Which direction? There was no obvious way to the clearing earlier...


To move onward through the maze, answer the following riddle:

Only one color, but not one size; stuck to the ground, yet easily flies. Present in sun, but not in rain; doing no harm, and feeling no pain. What is it?

Not long after the potion moved past her lips, she began to shrink. She watched the table as she decreased in size until much of the now taller than her grass blades obstructed much of her previous view. She could only see the bottom and legs of the table now, and found the feeling of being so short weird.

Now all she had to do was find her way through the grass to......well to what she didn't really know. All she did know was that she wasn't sure she liked being this size.

It is a shadow.

The grass is difficult to get through. It's highlands grass, very tough and entangled all over. The hedges high above you are silent now as you creep onwards, but that's no great consolation. Sure, a Blast-Ended Skrewt might not be able to find you, but what if there's an ant colony somewhere behind the next patch of grass?

Somewhere off to your right side, something titters. Oh, that little chuckle is worse than clicking mandibles. It implies intelligence. You whirl around, wand out, just as you hear the unmistakable sound of little footsteps, but there are just more blades of grass in front of you. You begin struggling forward blindly, trying to get to the end of the clearing.

Sandra would have cursed her way through the grass loudly, if it hadn't been so quiet. Too quiet. The fact that she was tiny didn't comfort her; all plant life held creatures that could attack her, and the thoughts of being eaten by an insect was not comforting. Having her wand in hand didn't make the grass any easier to move through, but there was no way in hell she was gonna holster it.

In case she heard something like that. Whirling towards the sound, she paused, wand trained on the grass to see if anything would move to attack her. But she saw nothing. Not comforted by that fact in the slightest, she turned back around and continued forward, faster this time.

A door appears! This is a second clearing, with mercifully trimmed grass. It's lit well, too – there's a fire ahead. Standing on top of it is a large soot-stained cauldron. Next to it stands a small table. Both are regular sized, but someone has considerately placed a small ladder next to the table that you can climb to get on top of it.

On the table are a number of phials and boxes - Peppermint, Moonstone, Fluxweed, Pomegranate, Doxy Eggs, Frozen Chizpurfles, Hellebore, Ginger Roots, Spine of a Lionfish, Lacewing Flies, Puffer-Fish Eyes - all carefully labeled. Potion ingredients. The one closest to the ladder has a second piece of parchment attached to it.

It's another riddle. Even if you can solve it, though, how will the ingredients get into the cauldron? The ladder seems to be just a little bit too short. Levitating something into it could work – if nothing gets spilled – but what if the potion needs stirring?

The young woman stumbled slightly when entering a second clearing; a warning would have been nice. Stealing a glance over her shoulder to see if whatever she had heard was following her. Whatever it was seemed to be gone now. Good. She brushed aside a few stray hairs, letting her eyes drift around the clearing appraisingly.

More potions. She would take them over whatever had been following her any day . Walking over to the table, she looked at the ingredients, eyes briefly flicking to the ladder. And returned again when she noticed the parchment.

Riddle number two.

Fleas.

That wasn't her biggest problem though. Just how in Merlin's name was she going to brew the potion at this size?

From where you stand you can see the potion simmering inside the cauldron. It gives no indication of being complete.

Hm. It wasn't done yet. Which meant she had to finish it.

Her face scrunched up as she glanced at the ingredients. The only problem with finishing the potion was that she didn't know what was being brewed. She certainly couldn't just start dropping ingredients into the cauldron, so the first thing she did was to check and see which ones were empty, which were half full, and which hadn't been used at all.

The potion ingredients lining the table look to be untampered with.

Aleksandra continued to stare at the ingredients that all seem to contain an equal amount. Hm. Maybe she should add the...Frozen Chizpurfles. Yes. That had to be it. Keeping her grip on the ladder, she flourished her wand, levitating the chizpurfles into the potion.

Even someone not afraid of bugs might not like the look of the Chizpurfles much. They're not alive, of course, tumbled on top of each other in a tightly corked phial.

But they're also much larger than usual in comparison, and there's something in that glassy, dead stare of theirs that just, well, creeps you out. And now that you're this small, you can study their bodies much more closely. They certainly look fearsome, and one can only imagine how much worse it would be if they suddenly sprang to life again, all scurrying legs and clicking chitin and... Shudder.

After successfully levitating the chizpurfles into the cauldron, a small scrap of parchment, almost hidden completely underneath the phial, catches your eye. Glad for the distraction, you retrieve it.

Sandra thought the creatures looked creepy when she was normal sized. When they were much bigger than her, and capable of inflicting harm had they been alive, it just sent a chill up her spin. Creepy. She tried not to look at there eyes as she levitated them into the cauldron.

Thankfully her eyes caught site of something else. Snatching up the parchment, she quickly let her eyes read the words. First once, then twice. Another creature. She only had a few ingredients that were creatures, and not all fit the description on the parchment.

Doxy Eggs. That had to be it. Casting again, she began to levitate the eggs into the potion.

Like the creature that lays them, the Doxy eggs aren't really bad as such, just... Well. If the grown Doxy is a pest, then its egg is pestilential. In its smell. It would make a compost heap pinch its nose shut. A troll's eyes would water.

Funny how these things don't get noticed until one is the size of a normal-sized goblet. Gives you a new perspective on everything. Perhaps the smell is some sort of defence mechanism or something?

In any case, just as before, there is another hint hidden underneath the box of eggs. Here's what it says:

She did not like being this small. Noticing things she wouldn't have notice human sized, like the horrid smell of the eggs. She couldn't have been happier to be rid of the eggs. Eyes returning to where the eggs had sat, she picked up the parchment that had once been hidden.

Hm. Picked at full moon's light. That had to be fluxweed. She carefully levitates the ingredient into the cauldron.

With the last ingredient added, you take a drink. The potion tastes terrible. Did you mix it wrong? But even as you fret, you start to grow again. Careful not to bump your head on the table.

As you regain your regular height, the hedges in front of you change as well, pushing themselves apart to reveal a narrow opening. Which way will you go?

To move forward along the path, answer the following riddle:

Often talked of, never seen. Ever coming, never been. Daily looked for, never here. Still approaching, coming near. What am I?

The only thing she didn't like about potions. The taste. Still, she downed the potion and realized that....she was growing. Ah it had worked! Realizing that she was growing back to her normal size, she was careful not to hit the table, eyes on the transforming hedges. Was that her way out of the maze?

Tomorow?

Left, right, left again... The maze seems to stretch out forever. The rustling hedges are with you once more, closing in on all sides. Suddenly you see another flickering light source up ahead. Another potion to brew, perhaps?

No. The next clearing (there are numerous paths leading to it, so any initial spark of pride of having reached this part of the maze before anyone else is quickly extinguished) houses several burning torches, two doors, and in front of them, a Sphinx. A living Sphinx. Very large, too.

Quick, what did you learn about them in Care of Magical Creatures... Are they aggressive? Are they even carnivorous? The Sphinx is sitting there utterly impassive, watching you calmly. She seems to know exactly what you're thinking – the intelligence in her eyes is almost unsettling – but she remains silent. Waiting.