McGonagall came for Hermione the night before the second task, right after dinner.
"Miss Granger, a word in my office, please," she said, in the voice she used when it wasn't really a request.
Hermione stood up, gave me a look, and followed her out of the Great Hall. At the doors, she glanced back over her shoulder and mouthed one word at me.
First.
I gave her a thumbs up. She rolled her eyes and went.
She didn't come back to the common room that night. I wasn't worried. I'd known exactly where she was going since about December, and I'd had two months to get ready for it.
Mostly I just thought it was a bit rude of them not to let her say goodnight.
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Early the next morning, something small and bony landed on my chest.
"Harry Potter, sir!" Dobby squeaked. "Harry Potter must wake up! Harry Potter is needing this!"
I opened one eye. He was holding a slimy grey-green ball of something that looked like rat tails, about two inches from my nose.
"Morning, Dobby," I said. "Is that Gillyweed?"
"It is, sir!" He bounced, which, since he was still standing on my chest, wasn't great.
"Dobby heard Professor Moody telling Professor McGonagall that Harry Potter's Miss Grangy is going to the bottom of the lake! And Harry Potter will need to breathe underwater for one whole hour! So Dobby is getting Gillyweed from Professor Snape's cupboard!"
I sat up and gently moved him onto the bed.
That was how it went in the books. Moody arranged things, and Dobby got there in the end. Funny how the plot kept trying to hand me the same power-up even after I'd said no.
"Dobby," I said, "that's really kind of you. But I've already got it sorted."
His ears drooped. "Harry Potter does not need the Gillyweed?"
"Not today." I patted his head. "Could you put it back in Snape's cupboard before he notices it's gone?"
Dobby perked up at once. "Dobby will do it right now, sir! Professor Snape will never know Dobby was there!" He clutched the Gillyweed to his chest. "And Dobby will wish Harry Potter good luck! Not that Harry Potter is needing luck!"
"Thanks, Dobby," I said. "I'll take it anyway."
He beamed at me and vanished with a crack. Over in the next bed, Neville sat bolt upright, looked around wildly, saw nothing, and lay back down again.
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At breakfast, Fred and George dropped onto the bench on either side of me.
"Where's your better half?" Fred asked, grabbing a slice of toast off my plate.
"Bottom of the lake, probably," I said.
They both laughed. I didn't. After a second, George stopped laughing and looked at me a bit more closely.
"He's joking," he said to Fred.
"He's definitely joking," Fred agreed. He didn't look sure either.
I simply finished my breakfast.
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The whole school had come down to the lake. The stands from the first task had been moved to the bank, and they were packed, all the way up.
Don't really know why they were all so excited since they were just gonna spend their time watching the black lake.
Out on the water, there was nothing to see except grey, flat lake and a bit of mist hanging over it.
The judges sat at a long table near the edge, with Percy Weasley in Crouch's chair looking like he'd been made king.
Dumbledore was sitting in the middle, looking very relaxed and very dry, for a man who had apparently spent the night putting four students to sleep at the bottom of a lake.
'Ten Galleons,' I thought.
The other three champions were already waiting at the water's edge. Cedric looked pale but determined.
Fleur kept checking her wand. Krum had taken his robes off and was standing in his swimming trunks, which, in February, was either very brave or very Durmstrang.
Cedric gave me a nod. "Ready?"
"Yeah," I said. "You?"
"No," he said honestly. "But I'm going anyway."
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Bagman pointed his wand at his own throat. "Sonorus!" His voice boomed out across the lake. "Well, all our champions are ready for the second task, which will start on my whistle. They have precisely one hour to recover what has been taken from them. On the count of three, then. One... two... three!"
The whistle went off, shrill and loud, and the stands went mad.
I'd promised Hermione no showing off, so I did what any normal, well-prepared champion would do. I took out my wand, pointed it at my own head, and cast a Bubble-Head Charm.
A big round bubble of air settled over my face. Next to me, Cedric was doing the exact same thing, and Fleur was too. For about one second, the three of us must have looked like a matching set of goldfish bowls.
Then I walked into the lake.
The cold was brutal for about a second. Then Gryffindor's body magic dealt with it, and it felt more like a chilly bath. I kept walking until the water closed over my head, and then I pushed off.
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Everyone who's ever played a video game hates the underwater level. The controls go weird, and there's always something nasty waiting in the dark.
The Black Lake was the underwater level.
It was dark and murky, and the bottom was a forest of long, swaying weeds. I could see about ten feet in front of me. Most people would have been swimming blind.
I wasn't most people. I could feel where the merpeople were, the same way I could feel a Horcrux thread, a big cluster of living magic somewhere off in the middle of the lake. Hermione was in there somewhere. I pointed myself at it.
A normal swimmer would have taken half an hour to get there. I tucked my wand arm against my side, put a small, quiet push charm behind my feet, and went.
It wasn't showing off if nobody could see it.
The grindylows came out of the weed about two minutes in. Little green horned things with long, spindly fingers, a whole swarm of them, grabbing at my ankles and my robes. Trash mobs.
I flicked my wand at them, and a wave of force rolled out through the water. Just a small one, enough to bowl them over.
They went tumbling away into the weed, and when they came back up, they took one look at me and decided to wait for easier prey.
Off to my left, a long way back, I saw a flash of light through the murk, and then a stream of red sparks went shooting up towards the surface.
Fleur was out. Right on schedule.
I kept going.
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I heard the merpeople before I saw them. The song from the egg drifted out of the gloom, and then the weed thinned out, and there was the village: rough stone houses covered in algae, with merpeople watching me from every window.
They had grey skin and yellow eyes. Nobody was ever going to make a Disney film about these.
In the middle of the village there was a huge statue of a merperson, carved out of a single boulder. Four people were tied to its tail.
Hermione was second from the left.
She was floating there, eyes closed, completely peaceful, her hair drifting around her face in the water.
The little blue clip was still in it. Next to her were Cho, a dark-haired girl I recognised as Krum's date from the Ball, and a tiny silver-haired girl who couldn't have been more than eight.
Gabrielle Delacour. Fleur's sister.
I swam straight to Hermione. A couple of the mermen raised their spears as I came in, but nobody tried to stop me.
I touched my wand to the rope around her ankles; it fell apart, and she floated free. I caught her arm before she could drift off.
Then I looked at Gabrielle.
In the books, this was the part where Harry hung around for ages, worrying, waiting for the others to show up, and nearly ran out of time because he wouldn't leave anyone behind.
I'd always thought that was the most Harry thing he ever did. I'd also always thought it was a massive waste of time.
I already knew how this ended. Fleur wasn't coming.
I swam over to Gabrielle and pointed my wand at her rope.
A merman with a spear moved in front of me straight away. He was big, with a necklace of shark teeth, and he shook his head.
"Only your own hostage," he said. His voice came out in a strange, screechy warble that I could somehow understand. "Leave the others."
"Her champion's not coming," I said. "The grindylows got her. I saw her sparks go up."
He looked at me. Then he looked at the merpeople behind him. One of them, an old mermaid with grey hair down to her waist, gave a small nod. The chieftainess, I guessed.
The merman lowered his spear.
"Thanks," I said, and cut Gabrielle free.
Optional side quest complete. Bonus points unlocked. I tucked one girl under each arm and kicked off for the surface.
Halfway up, I passed Cedric coming the other way, his bubble wobbling, looking around a bit lost. I pointed back the way I'd come. He gave me a thumbs up and swam off.
A bit further on, something huge and grey shot past me in the gloom. It had a shark's head and a man's body, and it was wearing swimming trunks.
'Krum,' I thought. 'Definitely very Durmstrang.'
I broke the surface, and the noise from the stands was enormous.
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People were screaming and cheering. Somebody was banging something that sounded like a saucepan. I pulled the Bubble-Head Charm off and took a breath of real air.
Hermione's eyes opened.
She coughed, blinked, and looked straight at me. The very first thing she said was:
"Were you first?"
"By miles," I said.
She looked delighted for about one second. Then she noticed the little girl under my other arm.
"Is that... Harry, is that Fleur's sister?"
"Fleur had to drop out," I said. "Grindylows."
She stared at me. "So you just took her?"
"I asked first," I said.
Gabrielle had woken up too, and she was staring at both of us with huge, scared eyes. Hermione reached over and put a hand on her shoulder.
"It's all right," she said gently. Then, because she's Hermione, she tried again in careful, slightly rusty French, and Gabrielle relaxed a little.
Hermione turned back to me while we swam for the bank. "That was showing off."
"That was the bare minimum," I said.
She thought about that. "I'll allow it."
The judges' end of the bank was chaos. Madam Pomfrey was waiting with blankets and a big steaming jug of something, and the second Hermione was out of the water, she got wrapped up so tightly she could barely move her arms. I dried myself off with a charm before anyone could wrap me up too.
Fleur reached us first, though.
She was soaking wet, with scratches all over her arms and face from the grindylows, and she pushed straight past Madam Pomfrey and grabbed Gabrielle in a hug so tight I thought she might snap her.
"Gabrielle!" she sobbed. "Gabrielle, ma puce..."
Then she looked up at me.
"You saved 'er," she said. Her voice was shaking. "Even though she was not your 'ostage."
"You'd have done the same," I said.
Fleur grabbed my face and kissed me on both cheeks. Then she turned to Hermione, who was still wrapped up like a burrito in about four blankets, and kissed her on both cheeks too.
"And you," she said. "You 'elped."
Hermione stared at her. "I was asleep."
"Still," Fleur said, very seriously, and went back to hugging her sister.
Hermione looked at me. Her face had gone bright pink, and I don't think it was the cold.
"Don't," she said.
"I didn't say anything," I said.
"You were going to," she said.
She wasn't wrong.
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Cedric came up with Cho a long time later, just before the hour ran out, and the Hufflepuffs cheered themselves hoarse.
Krum came up a few minutes after that, over the time limit, with his date clinging to him and his head still half shark. He looked very annoyed about the shark part.
While everyone was fussing over them, Hermione shuffled closer to me, blanket and all.
"Dumbledore came into McGonagall's office last night," she said quietly. "He explained everything. We'd be perfectly safe, and we'd wake up as soon as we reached the surface." She paused. "And then he did the charm on us himself."
I grinned at her. "Ten Galleons."
She sniffed. "I never agreed to that bet."
"You didn't say no," I pointed out.
She glared at me over the top of her blanket. It was hard to take seriously.
Then Bagman's magically magnified voice boomed out over the lake again.
"Ladies and gentlemen, we have reached our decision! Merchieftainess Murcus has told us exactly what happened at the bottom of the lake, and so, with a mark out of fifty for each of the champions, we have the following..."
Fleur came last. She'd been forced out by the grindylows and hadn't reached her hostage at all, so the judges gave her twenty-five points. The Beauxbatons crowd clapped anyway, and Fleur didn't seem to care much about the number. She was too busy holding on to Gabrielle.
Krum got forty. His Transfiguration was impressive, Bagman said, even if it was only half finished.
Cedric got forty-five. He'd found his hostage and come back just inside the hour. Cho kissed him on the cheek, and the Hufflepuffs screamed.
"And finally, Mr Harry Potter!" Bagman sounded thrilled. "Mr Potter also used the Bubble-Head Charm to excellent effect. He was the first to reach the hostages and the first to return, in a time of just fourteen minutes!"
The stands went wild. Hermione put her face in her blanket.
"The merpeople also inform us that, on discovering that Miss Delacour would not be able to reach her hostage, Mr Potter brought back Miss Gabrielle Delacour as well, and did so with the merpeople's permission. Most of the judges," and here Bagman shot a look at Karkaroff, "feel that this shows great morals and merits full marks. Mr Potter's score is forty-seven points!"
Dumbledore, Madame Maxime, Bagman and Percy had all given me ten. Karkaroff had given me seven, and he was sitting there with his arms folded, sulking.
I didn't really care. I was still in first place.
"The third and final task will take place at dusk on the twenty-fourth of June," Bagman went on. "The champions will be notified of what is coming precisely one month beforehand. Thank you all for your support of the champions!"
Hermione emerged from her blanket. "Fourteen minutes," she said.
"Speedrun," I said.
She pointed a finger at me out of the blanket. "Don't."
"It's literally the definition," I said.
"I know," she said. "That's why I said don't."
Up in the stands, Moody was standing near the top row, clapping along with everyone else. His magical eye was fixed on me the whole time.
I gave him a little wave.
Four months, Barty.
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That evening, back in the common room, the party was even louder than after the first task.
Fred and George had somehow got hold of a crate of Butterbeer. Dean had painted a new banner of me riding a shark, which wasn't even accurate.
Neville kept telling everyone that he'd heard a crack in the dormitory that morning and nobody believed him.
Hermione found me in the middle of it all and pressed something into my hand. Ten Galleons, stacked in a neat little pile.
"You didn't have to," I said.
"I keep my word," she said primly. "Unlike some people."
"I kept all three of yours," I said. "I didn't leave you down there; I was first, and I didn't show off."
She raised her eyebrows. "You brought back an extra hostage."
"That was kindness," I said.
"You did it in fourteen minutes," she said.
"That was efficiency."
She looked at me for a bit, and then she laughed and sat down on the arm of my chair.
"Fine," she said. "I suppose I won't break up with you."
"Generous," I said.
"I know." She stole my Butterbeer and drank half of it. "Two tasks down."
"One to go," I said.
Somewhere down in the lake, the merpeople were probably still talking about the boy who'd turned up early and taken two. I hoped they were annoyed about it. Their singing was terrible.
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