24th February 1995, the floor of the Black Lake, 7:34 AM
Harry woke into cold.
His first thought, before his eyes had quite finished opening, was that he could not breathe. His chest heaved against the dark pressure of water, and for the span of perhaps two heartbeats his throat closed in the old reflexive human terror of a body that had registered itself submerged in deep cold dark water and was sending the precise signal that meant get out, get out, get out.
Then his lungs—which had been working all along—drew their next breath, and Harry remembered the Gillyweed Potion.
He held still.
'Calm. Breathe. That's right. The potion is in you. You can breathe down here.'
His chest, after another small adjustment, accepted the principle. The cold dark water passed through the new soft fluttering apertures at the sides of his neck—gills, he registered with the small fascinated calm of a boy whose Cogitation had now engaged properly—and the dissolved oxygen reached his blood with the clean efficiency of a piece of Snape-brewed potion-work. He was, by every measurable signal, fine.
He let himself open his eyes properly.
He was lying on his side at the base of a tall mossy boulder, on a bed of pale grey-green lakeweed that swayed gently in the dim current. Above him the water was the colour of an unfinished bottle of dark ink—a deep cold green-black that admitted only the faintest hint of light from very far above. To his left, a small enchanted Runic lantern of the Department of Mysteries' fieldwork pattern hovered six inches above the lake-floor, casting a small steady amber halo over his starting position. Harry recognised the lantern at once; Uncle Sam had used the same model on the beach two days before.
He looked down at himself.
He was wearing the Atid Stella Champion's swim-suit—a single piece of fitted dark crimson fabric over the torso and legs, with the small enchanted Hogwarts crest at the breast and the small embroidered Atid Stella sigil at the hip, designed for warmth and minimum drag underwater. His holly wand was strapped in a small clear protective sheath at his right hip. His feet were bare; he registered, with the fascination of a boy registering his own new body, the small webbing that had grown between his toes. His fingers, when he flexed them, had the same. His hair drifted softly above his head in the lake-current.
He pushed off the lake-floor.
The water received his motion with the silken resistance of a deep lake. He kicked, with the webbed efficiency the potion had granted him, and rose.
He intended to swim upward. He intended to break the surface, get his bearings, identify the precise direction of the Mer-village from the position of the Hogwarts shore-pavilion, and then dive again with a clear sense of the geography. It was, by every Hermione-and-Draco bathymetric session of the last four weeks, the precise correct opening move.
He rose perhaps fifteen feet.
Then he hit something.
It was not a wall. It was not solid in any ordinary register. But the water above him, at a particular height, resisted his upward motion with the slow firm composure of a charm-boundary that had been precisely set. Harry pressed against it with his shoulder. It held. He felt the small humming resonance of layered Department wards just beneath the skin of the water.
'A dome.'
Of course. Uncle Sam had said the wards were very good.
Harry registered the precise pragmatic meaning: he was inside an underwater dome that had been constructed by Sam's team to limit the Task's playing-field. The Black Lake was, by Hermione's research, approximately three miles long; the Tournament could not realistically deploy six fourteen-year-olds across that distance. The dome contained them, kept them roughly in formation, and—Harry recognised in the same thought—kept the audience's view manageable.
The implication was useful, however. He was at the dome's edge. If he was at the edge, then the centre—and presumably the Mer-village, and the captives—was somewhere ahead of him, in the direction the dome ran inward.
He looked.
Along the lake-floor, perhaps thirty feet ahead of his current position, another small amber Runic lantern hovered at its station. Beyond that one, faintly, a third. And beyond that, almost lost in the dark green-black, a fourth. A trail of small lit waypoints, leading inward toward the deep centre.
The Task was clearer now.
He swam.
Tournament viewing pavilion, 7:38 AM
The enormous six-panel projection above the precise lake-water had resolved into a sharp magical-rendered live feed. The audience—fifteen hundred people, packed onto the grandstand in their winter cloaks with their cocoa-flasks and their five-school banners—had gone, over the previous four minutes, from the wide-awake-but-grumpy register of an audience that had been hauled out of bed at quarter past six to the deep silent fascination of an audience that had registered they were watching something they had never seen before.
Lee Jordan's amplified voice carried across the lake.
"Right. So our Champions are now all active. You can see Mr Potter, panel six, beginning his approach inward along the wayfinding trail. Mr Diggory, panel one, and Mademoiselle Delacour, panel two, are in the same general region near the central reef—we're seeing them on adjacent feeds. Mr Krum, panel three, looks to be heading north toward what looks like a—is that a kelpie? Mr Bagman, is that a kelpie?"
"That, Mr Jordan, is indeed a precise kelpie, possibly two of them, and Mr Krum appears to have engaged it. He is a brave young man."
The Uagadou commentator's calm voice joined: "And in panel five, Miss Okonkwo has located a small group of Merpeople and appears to be attempting communication with them. She is the only Champion who would have considered this approach. Whether it will succeed—"
"It does not appear to be succeeding," Lee said diplomatically.
The audience watched.
The dark water on the screens was, by every visible measure, unpleasant. Small shadows moved at the edges of the lantern-light. Occasional flickers of pale fish-flesh suggested precise small things that none of the audience particularly wished to look at directly. The temperature gauge that Sam's team had quietly installed at the foot of the pavilion read four point six degrees Celsius.
In the precise reserved central row, Ron—who had been complaining ten minutes earlier about being dragged out to stare at a lake—was sitting bolt upright with his cocoa held forgotten in his hand.
Sirius, behind them, had his hands clenched on the bench-rail. Lupin, beside Sirius, had his quiet teacher-face on.
Down on the shore beneath them, in the precise direction of the Atid Stella command tent, Ethan Esther stood in his charcoal travelling coat with his silver pocket watch open in his palm, watching the six-panel feed with his amber eyes in their steady scholarly attention. Verrona was beside him.
"Such a wonderful view but also quite...," Verrona murmured.
"Terrifying" Ethan chimed in.
The lake floor, 7:43 AM
Harry swam.
He moved from waypoint to waypoint along the lit trail with the precise economy his Cogitation had now established. His Ethan-trained sense of three-dimensional space adapted itself to underwater motion with surprising quickness; he found, after the first hundred feet, that his body had begun to enjoy the precise efficiency of the webbed kicks and the darting hand-corrections.
However, the cold he could not enjoy. The cold pressed in against the swim-suit with the slow patient insistence of a temperature that would, in another forty minutes, begin to be a genuine problem.
'Luna.'
The thought rose, against his will, with the precise small interior weight he had been suppressing for the last ten minutes.
'She could be in danger.'
His face darkened at the thought.
His magic, against the composed surface of his Cogitation, pulsed—the angry pulse of a person whose their dearest one had been removed from them and placed in danger.
He suppressed it.
'Breath Harry. She's probably safe. The Tournament does not kill its hostages. The water does not touch her. The cold does not touch her. Find her. Bring her up.'
The pulse subsided.
He swam on.
To his left, between two boulders, a long sinuous dark shape uncoiled with the lazy register of something enormous. Harry froze. He held still in the water, hovering with minimum motion that was permitted.
The shape was a tentacle.
It was approximately fifteen feet long. It was the colour of wet slate. It moved with an unhurried motion of a creature that had clearly registered Harry's presence, considered him for approximately two seconds, and decided he was not worth the bother.
The tentacle continued past. It vanished into the deeper dark.
Harry, after a precise count of four, resumed his swim.
'The Giant Squid. Don't provoke it. Don't get its attention... Just Keep going.'
The water, ahead, began to thicken with the slow lazy motion of more small dark shapes. Harry slowed. He pulled himself behind a mossy outcrop and watched.
A small swarm of Grindylows—perhaps ten, perhaps a dozen—was clustered at the base of the next waypoint lantern. They were the small pale green-skinned snake-like creatures with the long thin clutching fingers Harry had read about in Hermione's research-binder. They were, by every textbook description, the most dangerous thing in the Black Lake in the middle depths.
Harry steadied himself.
He drew his holly wand.
He calculated. The Grindylows had not seen him. He could, by swimming around the outcrop, attempt to bypass them entirely—but the bypass would carry him at least sixty feet off the lit trail into the precise dark, and he was not, going to leave the trail. The alternative was to clear them.
He aimed.
Stupefy!
The red bolt travelled at the precise slower-than-air speed of a stunning charm passing through water. It struck the nearest Grindylow with a clean efficiency of a properly-aimed shot. The creature went limp and drifted downward.
The other Grindylows registered the attack in approximately one second.
They scattered.
Harry, with the efficiency Ethan had drilled into him for moments of multiple targets, fired three more—Stupefy! Stupefy! Stupefy!—and three more Grindylows went limp. The remaining seven, with the cowardice of a pack creature whose pack had just been reduced by half, fled into the dark.
Harry, with his wand still raised and his eyes scanning for further movement, advanced past the waypoint lantern.
Tournament viewing pavilion, 7:51 AM
"Mr Potter has just dispatched approximately four Grindylows in three seconds," Lee Jordan said, with the Hogwarts-pride of a commentator who had been quietly the loudest Harry-supporter of the last fortnight. "Did everyone see that. Mr Bagman. Did everyone see that."
"Quite remarkable, Mr Jordan. Quite remarkable. Now if I may direct the audience's attention to panel four—Mr Thornwood appears to be having a somewhat harder time."
The audience's collective eyes turned to panel four.
Robert Thornwood, in his cranberry Ilvermorny swim-suit, was running—or the underwater equivalent. He was being chased by a swarm of Grindylows approximately twice the size of the one Harry had just dispatched, and he was, by every visible signal, out of stunning-spell capacity. He was firing Bombarda bursts that worked well against the nearest pursuers but did not deter the bulk of the swarm. His face, in the magical close-up of the projection, was a grim of a boy who had decided that fleeing was the only currently available strategy and was committed to executing it.
The Ilvermorny delegation, on the precise small east side of the grandstand, was cheering grimly.
"Come on, Robert," Headmistress Fontaine could be heard murmuring even over the magical amplification.
In panel two, Fleur Delacour had become entangled in a thick patch of underwater weeds and was attempting, with the elegance of a Beauxbatons Champion who had decided to not panic, to cut herself loose. Cedric, in panel one, had swum into her vicinity with the Hufflepuff instinct for helping someone who is having trouble, and was firing Diffindo spells at the weeds binding her ankles.
His third Diffindo, however—missed.
The spell, travelling on through the dark water past Fleur, struck something enormous that had been hovering, perhaps thirty feet beyond, in the deep current.
The audience inhaled.
The Giant Squid's nearest tentacle flicked.
Cedric's face, in the projection close-up, went instant grey-white of a boy who had just made the worst possible accidental contact in the worst possible body of water in Britain.
He grabbed Fleur's hand.
The two of them, with the precise synchronised desperate efficiency of two Champions whose Task had just gone considerably worse, fled directly outward along the lit trail in the opposite direction from the offended Squid.
The audience exhaled.
"That, ladies and gentlemen," Lee Jordan said with the neutrality of a commentator who was managing very carefully not to favourite, "is a piece of advice every magical aquatic-safety textbook puts in the first paragraph: do not aim spells anywhere near the Giant Squid. Mr Diggory has just learned this in real time. He and Mademoiselle Delacour appear to be recovering well."
"Quite, Mr Jordan. Quite."
In panel five, the Uagadou commentator's voice took on the precise small grim register: "Miss Okonkwo's communication attempt with the Merpeople group has resolved into the Merpeople group chasing her in the direction of the central reef. The Merpeople appear to have taken her approach as territorial intrusion. She is, however, outpacing them. She has very strong swim-form."
In panel three, Viktor Krum was now firing Stupefy bolts at the kelpie that had been pursuing him for the previous three minutes. The kelpie, in register of a half-tamed magical horse-creature of the deep waters, was almost-but-not-quite stunned by each bolt. Krum was working his wand with the focused intensity of a Champion who was, in his own private register, very angry about being chased by a kelpie.
The audience watched.
The temperature gauge read four point three degrees.
The lake floor, 7:56 AM
Harry reached the end of the lantern-trail.
The trail terminated, perhaps a hundred feet ahead of him, at what Harry first registered as a floating something. As he swam closer, his eyes adjusted to the further dark. The something was an enormous metal box—perhaps fifteen feet on each side, dull bronze in colour, anchored by heavy chains to the lake-floor below. A single Runic lantern floated above it, casting a small amber halo over its surface.
The box had a locked door at its front face.
The lock was, by Harry's first registration, Runic.
Harry's heart sank as saw the details on the lock.
It was not a simple lock. It was a precise layered Runic puzzle-lock, the kind that had appeared in Ethan's advanced Runic exercises. The puzzle, Harry registered with sinking composure, was not one he had completed.
But he could not yet attempt it. There was a problem.
The space around the box, in the dark beyond the Runic lantern's amber halo, was not empty.
Harry, holding still in the water at the edge of the trail's last lantern, felt the malicious attention of perhaps twenty or thirty pairs of eyes.
He could not see them. He could feel them.
The dark water beyond the box was full of them—Grindylows by dozens, at least two kelpies that he could now half-make-out as deeper shadows, and possibly something else, larger, at the further edge.
'They are protecting the box.'
Harry subconsciously heaved a long breath.
'Of course they are. The Tournament does not just hand you the box. The box is the final challenge. The captives are inside. The hostiles are outside. You have to fight your way in.'
He drew his wand.
He hesitated for a moment, calculating how many hostiles he could realistically Stupefy in a row before being overwhelmed, and was, in honest, uncertain.
Then there was a commotion from his left—
A wild blur of cranberry Ilvermorny fabric and wand-fire—
Robert Thornwood, with a bruised exhausted face of a boy who had been fighting Grindylows for the last twenty minutes and had now arrived at the final challenge with the American instinct for charging through the precise small thing in front of you, swam directly past Harry and blasted.
"BOMBARDA! BOMBARDA! BOMBARDA!"
His precise small wand-fire, in the layered orange light of the underwater detonations, lit up the Grindylow swarm around the box. Half of them scattered. The other half attacked.
Harry, registering Robert's arrival, moved.
He swam directly for the box.
He reached the door.
He looked at the lock.
He registered, in the first three seconds of attempting it, that he was not going to solve it within available time. The Runic puzzle would require approximately ten minutes of careful interpretation. He did not have ten minutes.
Robert, behind him, was firing in all directions and was, by every visible signal, failing to clear the swarm. He had perhaps two Bombarda left in him before his magical exhaustion overwhelmed him.
Harry changed his tactic as he aimed his wand directly at the Runic lock.
"BOMBARDA MAXIMA."
The detonation, in the underwater register, was the loudest spell Harry had cast since the Hungarian Horntail. The lock exploded. The door swung open. A rush of trapped air—Harry registered with the fascinated interior delight of a boy who had not expected this—escaped upward through the water in a column of bright bubbles.
The interior of the box was dry.
Harry registered this in approximately one second. The box, by the Tournament arrangement, was not a underwater container. It was a air pocket—an enchanted chamber that had been kept dry by the charm-work of the Department's safety team, designed so that the captives inside could breathe during the Task's long hours.
He turned back.
Robert, in the water behind him, had been overwhelmed by a kelpie and three Grindylows. He was on his back. His wand had fallen from his grip and was drifting in the water beside him.
Seeing this Harry did not hesitate.
He aimed past Robert. He fired Stupefy three times in precise rapid succession—the kelpie went limp, two Grindylows went limp for a moment and that was all he need—he swam to Robert, caught him under the arms, summoned Robert's wand and dragged him backward through the open box-door, and kicked the door closed behind them as the remaining Grindylows lunged.
The door, by the charm-work of the Department, sealed.
The water inside the box drained away in a smooth efficient way of an enchanted Vanishing Charm.
Harry was, suddenly and dryly, lying on a wooden floor in a dimly-lit chamber, with Robert Thornwood beside him, both of them gasping in the newly-available air.
He raised his head.
Five figures stood at the far end of the chamber, in the soft warm light of a precise small Department Runic chandelier overhead. They were wrapped in thick warm blankets. They were watching the open door of the chamber with bright attention of five captives who had been watching the Task's progress on a precise small clear bright six-panel projection on the precise small wall above the chamber's interior—the precise small same projection the precise small audience was watching above the lake.
Luna.
Hermione.
Cho Chang.
A precise small small girl who looked like Fleur—her sister.
A tall dark-haired Ravenclaw fifth-year—She said her name was Selene Goshawk.
A Uagadou seventh-year.
Harry's eyes, finding Luna's across the chamber, finally softened.
She rose and crossed the chamber. She knelt beside him and wrapped her thick warm blanket around his shivering shoulders.
"Hah-ree."
"L-Luna."
"You are very cold."
"Y-yes."
"And very brave."
"Th-th-thank you."
Behind her, Selene had risen and was kneeling beside Robert with another warm blanket as Robert peacefully drifted off in her arms. Cho was already at the door's far side, watching the projection for Cedric.
Harry didn't knew how long it was or when he had dozed off in Luna's arm only to be awoke by a barrages of noises.
Through the chamber wall, faintly, Harry heard further detonations of three more arrivals—Cedric, Krum and Fleur, dragging their exhausted selves through the dark with every spells they'd got, Adaeze having out-swum her Merpeople pursuers and arriving at the box from a far direction.
It took the four quite sometime dealing with the aftermath of Harry and Robert and blasted the door once more.
The chamber filled.
Cedric collapsed into Cho's arms.
Fleur knelt to her sister, in the wordless tearful embrace of a Champion who had been worried for the last hour and had not allowed it to show.
Krum reached Hermione and, with reverent slow motion of a young man whose composure had been entirely spent, pressed his forehead to hers before letting out a relief chuckle.
Adaeze, last in, smiled a warm smile and crossed to an open space where her assigned hostage—a Uagadou seventh-year, Harry registered, the girl who was Adaeze's closest friend at her own school—rose to meet her.
The chamber was warm. The projection on the wall above showed, in its six-panel grid, six empty starting positions on the precise small lake-floor, and—in the main central panel—the bronze box itself, now beginning to rise toward the surface, drawn by the Department's careful surface-side recovery charms.
Harry, in the warm shelter of Luna's blanket and her's arms, did the final shiver of the cold leaving his bones, and let his eyes close again.
Somewhere above, Ludo Bagman's amplified voice was announcing the end of the Task.
The audience was cheering madly as ever.
The Second Task was over.