Location from harry-potter-goblet-of-fire by
The Hogwarts Quidditch pitch — no matches this year due to the Triwizard Tournament. Instead, it has been transformed into the maze for the third task, the hedges growing twenty feet high by June.
The cancellation of Quidditch for the Triwizard Tournament is a wound the players never fully process. Oliver Wood would have been devastated. The pitch transforms throughout the year — first cleared, then planted, then overtaken by the enchanted hedges that form the third task's maze. The hedges grow tall enough to block the sky and thick enough to muffle sound, turning the familiar pitch into a claustrophobic labyrinth. The Triwizard Cup sits at the center — and it is not what it appears to be. Barty Crouch Jr has turned it into a Portkey, and the champion who touches it will not receive a prize but a one-way trip to a graveyard in Little Hangleton. When Harry and Cedric grab it together, the maze, the pitch, and Hogwarts itself fall away, replaced by tombstones and darkness.
What was once an oval grass pitch ringed by stands is being consumed by hedges. The maze for the third task grows from enchanted plantings that began as ankle-height shrubs and have reached twenty feet by the time of the task. Inside the maze: Blast-Ended Skrewts, Boggarts, a Sphinx, golden mist that turns things upside down, and at the center, the Triwizard Cup — glowing blue on its plinth, waiting to be touched. The stands remain for spectators who will watch the champions enter and wait, seeing nothing of what happens inside.
Also known as: the Quidditch pitch, Quidditch Pitch, the pitch, the maze