Chapter 296: Second Boss Appears! Giant Squid – Kraken!!!
"Ah! Too much!"
Neville yelped, eyes wide, his face twisting in alarm.
Up in the stands, students muttered in confusion.
"What is he doing?"
"Merlin, the other teams are already halfway out!"
"Hurry up! Just use a Revealing Charm or a Freezing Charm—huh?!"
A cry tore through the noise.
A flash of violent green exploded into view.
Enormous vines burst out of the ground, surging from the soil and racing toward the lake at impossible speed.
A mutated Devil's Snare.
"Grab a leaf! Grab a leaf!" Neville shouted as the main stem shot out over the water, his voice whipping away with it.
Cedric did not need telling. He caught hold of a broad leaf and whooped as it hauled him forward.
Luna settled herself onto a thick leaf that curled up politely to carry her and floated serenely toward the centre of the lake.
Like a golden spear cast from the sky, the thick rope of twisted vines spanned the lake, vaulting straight past the two teams inching their way along the invisible bridge.
In a blink, it had reached the middle of the lake.
Krum, Fleur, and the others stared, stunned.
"Did they just turn on cheats?" a Durmstrang champion muttered, slack‑jawed.
If the Glass Bridge was too hard to walk, they wouldn't walk it.
They'd grow a plant thick and tough enough to carry them across.
All that time on shore had been spent finding the perfect spot to let it take root.
"Oh," Ethan said softly from his vantage point above, eyebrows lifting.
"That is a new way to clear the stage. Even I did not think of it."
He smiled, genuinely pleased.
"No wonder they are all members of my Morning Star Club, and champions chosen by the Goblet."
His gaze slid to Neville, still screaming as the over‑fertilised vine roared out of control.
Who would have thought that Gryffindor's supposed deadweight, who "could not do anything," would wield that kind of power?
"Magic is not just spells. Herbology, Alchemy, Potions, even painting can all become unique strengths," Ethan murmured.
Just as people should not be boxed in by a House crest.
Even a tearful little Gryffindor might one day raise a sword against evil.
And a model Ravenclaw student could devote himself to the Dark Arts.
That one was Quirrell, obviously.
"Hehe. Jaws are going to hit the floor," Ethan said, eyes curving.
"And the main act is still to come."
In the stands, even the Hogwarts students were struck dumb.
"Holy hell," Ron breathed.
His mouth hung open wide enough to swallow an orange. "I have never seen a plant that big. It could poke a hole straight through Merlin's floorboards."
What had looked like a doomed line‑up had just blasted into the lead.
Ron watched Neville clinging to the vine, feelings churning.
It was like all his mates had traded up to sleek new brooms while he was still pedalling a two‑wheeler.
On the Ravenclaw side, Mandy pushed up her glasses again, looking as smug as if she had planned it herself. "Told you."
"There are no weaklings in Ethan's Morning Star Club."
"Even a so‑called dud can shine."
This was their Ravenclaw leader, Ethan Vincent, working miracles.
The brief silence was shattered.
A roar of astonished cheers crashed around the stands.
"Incredible! Absolutely incredible!"
Lee Jordan had climbed onto the commentary table, eyes blazing, bouncing on the spot, clutching his microphone like he might hurl himself into the arena at any moment.
"Neville Longbottom has used a completely unprecedented plant to cross most of the Black Lake in one move!"
"While Durmstrang and Beauxbatons are still picking their way back and forth along the Glass Bridge—"
"Hogwarts has overtaken them!"
"Neville, you legend!"
Not even Professor McGonagall was in the mood to scold his language.
Professor Sprout wiped at the corners of her reddened eyes.
"Ethan was the one who found him," she said thickly. "Before that, who would have backed ideas that sounded that wild?"
Even she had thought all that talk of "mutation" and "hybridisation" was far‑fetched at first, something that could not possibly work.
Yet Neville had made it real.
At the judges' table, the panel exchanged looks.
In each other's eyes they saw the same surprise and approval, and several bent over their parchments to make more notes.
"I heard all three of Hogwarts' champions this time are from Mr Vincent's club. Morning Star, was it?"
"Rumour says he has been putting them through secret training."
"Judging by this, there is something to it."
Out on the lake, Neville finally managed to wriggle free of the leaves and branches.
The shouts crashing over from the shore reached him at last.
He froze.
"Hear that?" Cedric said with a grin. "That is all for you."
"F‑for me…?" Neville stammered.
"Of course. Who else thought to use plants?" Cedric said. "And even if they had, none of them could have grown anything like this."
"This was your work."
Neville stared at him.
No one had ever really praised him before.
As a child, his family had worried he might be a Squib.
Even after the Hat sent him to Gryffindor, House of Courage, he had always felt like the odd one out.
Over time, he had started to believe it himself: that he was useless.
Then, on a "nothing to lose" whim, he had taken Ethan's entrance test for the Morning Star Club.
Somehow, he had passed.
And life had never been the same.
Now, with the roar of the crowd washing over him, Neville ducked his head as his nose prickled.
Heat flushed up his neck, into the tips of his ears.
"I will not waste what Ethan has done for me," he said hoarsely, scrubbing at his eyes.
For once, his usually wandering gaze was steady.
He turned to Cedric and Luna, cheeks burning. "Let us… let us win this together."
"Show the other schools what Hogwarts can do—and what the Morning Star Club can do."
Cedric flashed a wide grin. "That is the spirit—hmm?"
He broke off, frowning, and looked down.
The lake, smooth a moment before, had begun to heave.
A deep rumble rose, like a giant stirring a cauldron with a shovel the size of a tree.
Waves piled over one another, drawing inward.
A vast whirlpool formed, dragging everything toward its centre.
The pull was so strong that a Beauxbatons champion missed her footing and toppled into the water. There was a short, sharp scream, and then the pale arm reaching up vanished, dragged under by the churning currents.
"Shield! Now!" Fleur shouted, eyes wide.
She stared, horrified, at the monstrous vortex.
One thought beat in her skull.
The monster is here.
"The monster has come," Krum growled, knuckles white around his wand.
All eyes were fixed on the boiling centre of the lake.
With a great crashing splash, something surged up.
A single tentacle.
Pale grey underneath, ink‑black on top, thick and supple, lined with round, fleshy suckers.
A squid's limb.
Just far, far too big.
That one tentacle alone was several dozen metres long. One sucker was almost as big as a person.
The lake roared.
Water poured off a mass rising from the depths like a moving cliff.
A huge, domed head. Yellow eyes with no clear pupil. A forest of curling tentacles coiling and uncoiling like the judgment of the end of the world.
The second task's monster.
The giant squid Kraken.
Rita Skeeter's Quick‑Quotes Quill slipped from her numb fingers and clattered to the floor.
She did not even notice.
So there was something as shocking as a dragon after all.
High above, Ethan looked down on the panicked splashes, the cries, the chaos, and smiled.
"The real show," he said softly, "is only just beginning."