Chapter 40: Second Task

24th of February 1995, Hogwarts

(Nathan POV)

Nathan was late. He spent so much time worrying about the task that he couldn’t sleep and ended up passing out around three in the morning in the library. He tried to find any new tricks to casting underwater. It was quite a tricky subject, and he now knew it was a bad idea to cast a blasting charm when he’s under the lake. Thank Merlin, he was able to find that out, since it was an easy a way to accidentally kill himself.

Even then, certain spells, especially curses, hexes and charms are slow underwater but water magic is extremely quick. Air magic and transfiguration are relatively the same as on land so he practiced these branches of magic the most.

Funnily enough, finding out how to solve the riddle was the easiest thing. Moody of all people was a huge help and told him to clean the golden egg while taking a bath. The riddle was unnerving but straight forward, they would take something precious from him and he would have to retrieve it from under the back lake. The only problem was how to breathe underwater. He thought about using the bubble head charm but his mother said that the charm was fragile and could be easily popped if he’s in a fight under the lake.

It was Neville that saved his ass this time. Who knew herbology of all things was the answer to his problem? Neville had told him about the existence of gillyweed when he was killing himself trying to find an answer in the library. One owl order later and he had a way to breathe underwater. He spent the rest of the time after that, trying to find ways to make the task easier for himself.

He had to wonder how his sister was dealing with her egg. She seems to have it under control, according to Rose that it. He almost went to her for help a few times but chickened out at the last second. He felt like he had something to prove to her. That he could do it on his own. But that didn’t matter since the task was in a few minutes. He ran up to his dormitories and took the gillyweed from his trunk and put on his bathing suit, then proceeded to sprint towards the black lake.

As he pounded down the lawn, he saw that the seats that had encircled the dragons’ enclosure in November were now ranged along the opposite bank, rising in stands that were packed to the bursting point and reflected in the lake below. The excited babble of the crowd echoed strangely across the water as Nathan ran flat-out around the other side of the lake toward the judges, who were sitting at another gold-draped table at the water’s edge. Jasmine, Fleur, and Krum were beside the judges’ table, watching Nathan sprint toward them.

“I’m… here…” Nathan panted, skidding to a halt in the mud and accidentally splattering Fleur’s robes. “Where have you been?” said a bossy, disapproving voice. “The task’s about to start!” Nathan looked around. Percy Weasley was sitting at the judges’ table; Mr. Crouch had failed to turn up again. He did find the fact that he missed the yule ball a bit weird. According to his dad, Crouch has been trying to do his best to regain the influence he lost after his son was outed as a death eater. He wouldn’t miss an event like the yule ball for just being a bit ill. He must have either had a very dangerous disease like the dragon pox or a very embarrassing one.

“Now, now, Percy!” said Ludo Bagman, who was looking intensely relieved to see Nathan. “Let him catch his breath!”

Dumbledore smiled at Nathan, but Karkaroff and Madame Maxime didn’t look at all pleased to see him. It was obvious from the looks on their faces that they had thought he wasn’t going to turn up. He always appreciated the headmaster supporting him all these years. He even helped tutor him a little ever since his name got out of the goblet. He learnt more about magic in the last few months than he did his entire life. He guessed he wasn’t called the most powerful wizard in the word for no reason.

He had even been making sure that he would connect with his newly returned sister, asking about their conversations and what her life outside of Hogwarts is like. He probably wanted to make sure she’s well taken care of. Merlin knows she deserves it after what his mother’s sister and her family did to her.

Nathan bent over, hands on his knees, gasping for breath; he had a stitch in his side that felt as though he had a knife between his ribs, but there was no time to get rid of it; Ludo Bagman was now moving among the champions, spacing them along the bank at intervals of ten feet. Nathan was on the very end of the line, next to Krum, who was wearing swimming trunks and was holding his wand ready. He was a bit distracted by Fleur’s silver bathing suit that left little to the imagination. It had to be illegal to be this attractive, surely. Oddly enough, his sister was wearing her usual attire, a black leather jacket, a shirt and jeans. Did she not solve her egg or something? It doesn’t matter, he was too tired to think about it.

Bagman gave Nathan’s shoulder a quick squeeze and returned to the judges’ table; he pointed his wand at his throat as he had done at the World Cup, saying, “Sonorus!” and his voice boomed out across the dark water toward the stands. “Well, all our champions are ready for the second task, which will start on my whistle. They have precisely an hour to recover what has been taken from them. From Viktor Krum we have taken Hermione Granger, his date to the Yule ball. From, Fleur Delacour we have taken her sister Gabrielle, from Nathan Potter, we have taken his date Tracy Davis, and finally from Jasmine Evanshade, we have taken her sister Rose Potter. The task starts on the count of three. One . . . two . . . three!”

Shit they took hostages. What the actual fuck, he had to make sure Hermione, Tracy and Rose will be alright.

The whistle echoed shrilly in the cold, still air; the stands erupted with cheers and applause and both foreign champions jumped immediately into the freezing water. He didn’t look at what his sister was doing and just pulled the handful of gillyweed out of his pocket, stuffed it into his mouth, and waded out into the lake. He hoped this worked, the plant was very expensive and he didn’t have the luxury of wasting some of it before the task.

It was so cold he felt the skin on his legs searing as though this were fire, not icy water. His sodden robes weighed him down as he walked in deeper; now the water was over his knees, and his rapidly numbing feet were slipping over silt and flat, slimy stones. He was chewing the gillyweed as hard and fast as he could; it felt unpleasantly slimy and rubbery, like octopus tentacles. Waist-deep in the freezing water he stopped, swallowed, and waited for something to happen.

Then, quite suddenly, Nathan felt as though an invisible pillow had been pressed over his mouth and nose. He tried to draw breath, but it made his head spin; his lungs were empty, and he suddenly felt a piercing pain on either side of his neck; Nathan clapped his hands around his throat and felt two large slits just below his ears, flapping in the cold air. He had gills. Without pausing to think, he did the only thing that made sense; he flung himself forward into the water. The first gulp of icy lake water felt like the breath of life. His head had stopped spinning; he took another great gulp of water and felt it pass smoothly through his gills, sending oxygen back to his brain. He stretched out his hands in front of him and stared at them. They looked green and ghostly under the water, and they had become webbed. He twisted around and looked at his bare feet; they had become elongated and the toes were webbed too: It looked as though he had sprouted flippers.

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The water didn’t feel icy anymore either . . . on the contrary, he felt pleasantly cool and very light. . . . Nathan struck out once more, marveling at how far and fast his flipper-like feet propelled him through the water, and noticing how clearly, he could see, and how he no longer seemed to need to blink. He had soon swum so far into the lake that he could no longer see the bottom. He flipped over and dived into its depths. Silence pressed upon his ears as he soared over a strange, dark, foggy landscape.

He could only see ten feet around him, so that as he sped through the water new scenes seemed to loom suddenly out of the oncoming darkness: forests of rippling, tangled black weed, wide plains of mud littered with dull, glimmering stones. He swam deeper and deeper, out toward the middle of the lake, his eyes wide, staring through the eerily gray-lit water around him to the shadows beyond, where the water became opaque. Small fish flickered past him like silver darts.

Once or twice, he thought he saw something larger moving ahead of him, but when he got nearer, he discovered it to be nothing but a large, blackened log, or a dense clump of weed. There was no sign of any of the other champions, merpeople or any hostages.

He decided to use his first spell to help him cover more ground. It was a spell that Dumbledore taught him called Aqua Eructo. The spell can create a spout of water from the tip of the wand. The intensity of the water flow could be anything from a thin fountain to an immense, powerful and destructive jet. In this case he used it by pointing his wand backwards and using the spell to propel himself forwards.

He went at the direction of the castle, since he remembered Tracy mentioning that she could see the merpeople from the windows in the Slytherin common room, but was suddenly grabbed by something below him. Nathan twisted his body around and saw five grindylows, small, horned water demons, poking out of the weed, their long fingers clutched tightly around Nathan’s leg, their pointed fangs bared.

Nathan quickly went drew his wand and cast a wide area stunner; another trick Dumbledore taught him. Instead of hearing his incantation, a bubble came out of his mouth and instead of a bright red light, the grindylows were struck with what looked like boiling water and fell unconscious.

He swam on for what felt like at least twenty minutes. He was passing over vast expanses of black mud now, which swirled murkily as he disturbed the water. Then, at long last, he heard a snatch of haunting mersong.

Nathan swam faster and soon saw a large rock emerge out of the muddy water ahead. It had paintings of merpeople on it; they were carrying spears and chasing what looked like the giant squid. Nathan swam on past the rock, following the mersong.

A cluster of crude stone dwellings stained with algae loomed suddenly out of the gloom on all sides. Here and there at the dark windows, Nathan saw the merpeople for the first time. They had grayish skin and long, wild, dark green hair. Their eyes were yellow, as were their broken teeth, and they wore thick ropes of pebbles around their necks. They leered at Nathan as he swam past; one or two of them emerged from their caves to watch him better, their powerful, silver fish tails beating the water, spears clutched in their hands.

Nathan sped on, staring around, and soon the dwellings became more numerous; there were gardens of weeds around some of them, and he even saw a pet grindylow tied to a stake outside one door. Merpeople were emerging on all sides now, watching him eagerly, pointing at his webbed hands and gills, talking behind their hands to one another. Nathan sped around a corner and a very strange sight met his eyes.

A whole crowd of merpeople was floating in front of the houses that lined what looked like the merpeople’s version of a village square. A choir of merpeople was singing in the middle, calling the champions toward them, and behind them rose a crude sort of statue; a gigantic merperson hewn from a boulder. Four people were bound tightly to the tail of the stone merperson.

Tracy was tied between Hermione and a girl who looked no older than eight, whose clouds of silvery hair made Nathan feel sure that she was Fleur Delacour’s sister. There was no sign of Rose, other than half a rope of weed he assumed she used to be tied with. Had Jasmine finished her task so easily? All three of the remaining hostages appeared to be in a very deep sleep. Their heads were lolling onto their shoulders, and fine streams of bubbles kept issuing from their mouths.

Nathan sped toward the hostages, half expecting the merpeople to lower their spears and charge at him, but they did nothing. The ropes of weed tying the hostages to the statue were thick, slimy, and very strong but a cutting curse later and Tracy’s rope was cut.

A part of him wanted to leave and be done with this task but another part of him knew that if he left Hermione, he wouldn’t be able to forgive himself. So, he pointed his wand at the rope binding his best friend. At once, several pairs of strong gray hands seized him. Half a dozen mermen were pulling him away from Hermione, shaking their green-haired heads, and laughing. “You take your own hostage,” one of them said to him. “Leave the others.”

Like hell he will. He never cared about the stupid task; his only priority is his friends’ safety. So, he’ll wait until each hostage is rescued. Where were the other champions? Would he have time to take Tracy to the surface and come back down for Hermione and the girl? Would he be able to find them again? He looked down at his watch to see how much time was left, forty minutes. Thank Merlin his uncle Sirius gave him this enchanted watch last Christmas. He couldn’t be more grateful now.

Nathan looked around, waiting. Where were Fleur and Krum? Time was getting short, and according to the song, the hostages would be lost after an hour.

The merpeople started screeching animatedly. Those holding Nathan loosened their grip, staring behind them. Nathan turned and saw something monstrous cutting through the water toward them: a human body in swimming trunks with the head of a shark. It was Krum. He appeared to have transfigured himself; but badly.

The shark-man swam straight to Hermione and began snapping and biting at her ropes; the trouble was that Krum’s new teeth were positioned very awkwardly for biting anything smaller than a dolphin, and Nathan was quite sure that if Krum wasn’t careful, he was going to rip Hermione in half. Darting forward, Nathan hit Krum hard on the shoulder and just cast a cutting curse at Hermione’s rope. The transfiguration must have messed up his brain or something because what the actual hell was he thinking trying to cut a rope with his teeth.

Krum, then, grabbed Hermione around the waist, and without a backward glance, began to rise rapidly with her toward the surface.

Now what? Nathan thought desperately. If only he could be sure that Fleur was coming. But still no sign. He wanted to leave the girl; he really did but it wouldn’t sit right with him. There was nothing to be done except…

He pointed his wand at the girl’s rope, but the mermen now closed in around Tracy and the little girl, shaking their heads at him.

“Get out of the way!” He pointed his wand at them. Only bubbles flew out of his mouth, but he had the distinct impression that the mermen had understood him, because they suddenly stopped laughing. Their yellowish eyes were fixed upon Nathan’s wand, and they looked scared. There might be a lot more of them than there were of him, but Nathan could tell, by the looks on their faces, that they knew no more magic than the giant squid did.

They scattered. Nathan cut the ropes binding the small girl to the statue, and at last she was free. He seized the little girl and Tracy around the waist, and kicked off from the bottom.

It was very slow work. He could no longer use his webbed hands or his wand to propel himself forward; he worked his flippers furiously, but Tracy and Fleur’s sister were like potato-filled sacks dragging him back down. He fixed his eyes skyward, though he knew he must still be very deep, the water above him was still so dark.

He was drawing breath with extreme difficulty. He could feel pain on the sides of his neck again, he was becoming very aware of how wet the water was in his mouth, yet the darkness was definitely thinning now. He could see daylight above him.

He kicked hard with his flippers and discovered that they were nothing more than feet, water was flooding through his mouth trying to get into his lungs. He was starting to feel dizzy, but he knew light and air were only ten feet above him. he was almost there.

And then he felt his head break the surface of the lake; wonderful, cold, clear air was making his wet face sting; he gulped it down, feeling as though he had never breathed properly before, and, panting, pulled Tracy and the little girl up with him.

He had done it. He finished the second Task of the Tri-wizard tournament.