Chapter 30: Gillyweed
"Neville…." Hermione's authoritative voice cut through the white noise of her best mate's exhausted brain. "Neville, tell me again."
Neville sighed, his eyes rapidly becoming glazed over from staring at the same bookshelf in the library for half the night. Keeping his gaze level, he began to thump his chin against the sprawled open book before him, tapping out a kind of fried Morse code as he recited the egg's riddle:
"Come seek us where our voices sound…."
"The Black Lake, then – that's obvious," Hermione interpreted. "The egg's song could only be heard when underwater, so you'll be going into the mermaid's domain."
"We cannot sing above the ground…. An hour long you'll have to look, to recover what we took."
Leaning against another bookshelf, arms folded, Ron shrugged. "Well, I'd say the rest is pretty self-explanatory."
"Yeah, if it weren't also suicidal!" Neville turned to ogle his best mate. "No, scratch that – it's bloody impossible! I can't hold my breath for even a minute, let alone an hour! But they're expecting us to dive down to search for…. whatever-it-is!" He sighed, exasperated. "How would you take on a problem like this, Hermione?"
The striking witch prettily bit her lip, clearly torn. "There are several ways to magically preserve one's breath underwater…. but I don't know how much advice I can give. You're the champion, Neville – these are your tests. There's only so much help Ron or I could give that wouldn't be considered cheating."
Neville groaned and slouched back in his chair. Trust Hermione to be ethically by-the-book. Worse still, it was getting rather late. They'd have to pack it up in the next few minutes and return to the Common Room if they didn't want to break curfew.
Neville was just about ready to call it when Mad-Eye Moody suddenly appeared in their midst, nearly out of nowhere. Hermione noticeably jumped.
"Longbottom – if you're quite finished conducting research for the night, I suggest you get your rest! The Second Task is tomorrow. Weasley: if you'll be a good chap and come with me; the Deputy Headmistress would like a word with you."
"With me?" Ron appeared baffled. He might have once been estranged from Neville over the issue of who got more attention, but when he had desired for more attention, this wasn't the kind he meant. "What did I do now?"
Hermione pursed her lips in an amused smile. "The fact your first reaction is to wonder what you did is pretty telling…"
"Ha, ha, laugh it up." But a grin was now also trying to fight its way onto Ron's face.
"Yes, yes, we can all make googly eyes at each other some other time!" Moody snapped impatiently. "Weasley: come!"
"He won't break curfew, Professor?" Hermione floated.
"I'll see that he won't, miss!" Moody growled over his shoulder, still sounding annoyed.
"Sure, I'll see you back in the Common Room," Ron nodded.
"Be careful, won't you?"
"Hey…. It's me!" And Ron gave Hermione a tousled wink before following Moody out. Hermione watched them go, still gnawing on her bottom lip.
"Well, we'd better clear all this away," she sighed.
"You go on ahead, 'Mione. I'll catch up," Neville shooed her.
She studied him for a minute, the concern radiating off her as much as it had on the Covered Footbridge, before flitting over and bending close to his ear. "Get some rest," she murmured. The kiss she bestowed on his cheek was still unexpected enough that the nerve endings under his very skin tingled.
Neville sighed and slammed shut the tome he had practically fallen asleep in. In less than twelve hours, he would be sent into the Black Lake with literally no plan or spell that would make him breathe under the waves, so he'd probably drown. He'd be the first Triwizard Champion to lose by essentially committing…. involuntary suicide? Was that even a word? Hermione had warned him people had previously died in this bloody Tournament, but he was fairly certain his death would be the most pathetic.
He needed to think.
More and more, Neville found the best place for him to think was in the Herbology greenhouses down on the grounds. The glass doors leading into the fauna sanctuaries were almost always open, and even on the chance they were not, Professor Sprout always let her favorite students in on where she hid the key.
Neville easily accessed the greenhouse where he took most of his Herbology classes and began pacing the length, then the width, of the space. He tried not to look at his gaunt, pale reflection staring back at him through the pristine glass, illuminated by the light of the moon.
"…. Are the Wrackspurts troubling you, Neville?"
Neville jumped nearly a foot in the air as Luna's dreamy voice frolicked into his ears. Wheeling about, he caught her watching him from across the expanse of the room; she was so quiet, he hadn't even seen her when he walked in.
"Oh…. Luna, I was just…"
"Preparing yourself for the Task tomorrow?" she finished for him kindly.
He sighed. "The only thing I seem able to prepare for is how to drown out there with some semblance of dignity. If I could just find a spell or a charm that would help me stay safely under…. To breathe…."
He was mumbling aloud to himself at this point, so it was mildly heartening that Luna would listen to his troubles anyway.
"I don't know about a spell or a charm…. but you could always use gillyweed!"
Neville froze, turning to stare at her, marvel at her, as Luna rushed over to a nearby shelf and plucked a glass jar – lidded – off the top rack. She wordlessly handed it to him, lips for once drawn in a solemn line as she observed him take in the gift.
Neville held the jar of squiggling weed (decidedly not of the more recreational, Muggle variety) and turned it this way and that, altogether stunned. Here, in his hands, was the answer he had been looking for… and with only hours to spare! As one of the best in his year in Herbology alongside Hermione, he was thoroughly ashamed of himself that he hadn't thought of it before!
"Luna," he breathed, almost gasped out, a nervous excitement, an urgency, overtaking him. "Do you think this will help me hold my breath for an hour?"
"I don't know…." she considered the question mildly. "I should expect that it would. Of course, that depends on how much you ingest – an extra large clump should do it!"
"Just swallow a wad of this and I'll…. grow gills like a fish…" Neville breathed out in wonder. He now let a victorious cackle of glee. "Luna, I….. thank you! ….. Thank you!"
Overcome with gratitude and relief, he cupped her face and ducked in to plant an exuberantly wet kiss on her cheek. He was so euphoric, he didn't notice the myriad of emotions flickering across Luna's face: surprise, and maybe a thin veil of delight.
Neville turned away to dash out of the greenhouse with his prize… and nearly lunged right into Mad-Eye Moody!
The Defense Against the Dark Arts professor did not look pleased. "Longbottom – if you're quite finished sneaking about with Miss Lovegood, I suggest you be on your way so that I might borrow her!"
Neville frowned hard, bristling at just what Moody was implying by 'sneaking about.' But it wouldn't do to get docked any more points from Gryffindor than he already was just being out here past curfew, so he bit back any kind of retort. Bestowing one last grateful look over his shoulder at Luna, he dashed for the lights of the castle in the short distance.
Neville began to worry all over again when he woke up the next morning to find Ron's four-poster bed still empty – not even slept in! Meeting Hermione at the portrait hole, he elected it was best not to say anything about it, for his bookish friend seemed just as anxious as he felt. The pair walked down to the Black Lake together, the chilly air of early winter gusting up Neville's robes that now only concealed him wearing nothing but his swimming trunks. In the pockets of his robes, he kept stashed the jar of gillyweed Luna had given him, and he fingered it, as if afraid it might disappear.
Unlike before the First Task, Hermione was allowed to stay by his side all the way down to the water's edge, right up to the edge of the pier from which the Champions were to launch themselves. It was like she was the coach to his athlete, and with his free hand not gripping the gillyweed, Neville sought out Hermione's fingers to give them a squeeze. He was heartened when he felt her squeeze back. He would just have to rely on his Herbological expertise, Luna's nudging and the counsel of his best girl now at his side, because at the moment, that was all he had.
Neville just hoped it was enough to see him through.
At five to the hour, he shucked his robes off of his shoulders, letting them pool to the dock. The last thing he needed was to psych himself out over his own body image, now on full display for three whole schools to see. If anything, Hermione seemed more flustered than he was, for glancing to her, he thought he saw her cheeks flush.
Inhaling a deep cleansing breath, Neville handed the jar of gillyweed to Hermione and let her unscrew the cap. Dipping her hand into the slimy stuff, she dug deeper and deeper until he told her to stop.
The beautiful brunette witch winced as she came up with a glob of the stuff somewhere between the size of a Snitch and a Bludger in her fist. "Glad you have a plan, but do you think this will work?"
"It'll have to do," Neville huffed nervously.
Hermione sighed. "Down the hatch, then." She passed the glob to him, and Neville inhaled it, despite the foul taste. Hermione's cringe was now one of sympathy for him. "At least you eat like a gentleman, unlike Ron."
If his mouth wasn't filled with a mix between plant and goop, Neville might have riposted with a witty retort. As it was, he couldn't dare speak much of anything without risking gagging or upchucking the stuff, and he forced the gillyweed down. The aftertaste in his throat was horrendous as he swallowed. No pronounced change immediately happened, and he frantically looked to Hermione for help.
"Maybe wait until you hit the water…."
She was cut off by the sound of the cannon – Filch was too quick on the draw again. Neville suddenly felt like he couldn't breathe, and the fact that he had just wolfed down something tasting little better than dragon dung wasn't helping. He was practically clawing at his throat so that he didn't feel someone's hand – too rough to be Hermione's - slam into the small of his back and shove him in.
Over like lead he went, and when he hit the water, Neville sank like a stone. He was writhing, thrashing, certain that the gillyweed was faulty, it hadn't worked, he was going to just descend until he asphyxiated and drowned….
All at once – he breathed.
Twisting so that he was right side up, Neville watched with gobsmacked amazement as webbed, filmy skin began to appear in the spaces between his fingers. He hissed as he felt a kind of spasm digging into the side of his neck, and he reached out to touch it once the brief pain had subsided. There were slashes in the side of his throat – gills! Gills that would leave openings in his skin so that he could breathe like a fish! Or a mermaid!
Mermaid…. The hardest hurdle of the task cleared, Neville began to kick equally webbed feet and swim through the maze of seaweed grass. It bothered him for a moment that he didn't know exactly where to go, so he settled for letting intuition be his guide. He logically figured that the deeper he dove, the likelier it was that he found what the mermaids took. Hermione would be pleased and proud that for once, he was using his head.
He wondered if she was watching him now, despite how the Task was taking place underwater. He wondered if Luna was watching him, perhaps somewhere up in the stands by the lakeshore.
Or Ron…. would Ron have gone down to the stands early, to get prime seating, perhaps? Maybe…. though surely not before wishing Neville luck.
Neville dove down into a small sea canyon. Despite how the abyss yawned blackness when up at the top, the light actually did manage to penetrate this far down, all the way to the lakebed. More seaweed grew here, and Neville forded it gamely. Through his gills, he could feel himself breathing just as hard as he would breathe through his mouth while swimming along the surface. He kept himself on that pace, for the hour would elapse quicker than he might imagine.
The seaweed finally parted to reveal a rocky stretch down within the canyon, the empty expanse only punctuated by four submerged buoys anchored to the seabed. When Neville saw what was attached to them, he pulled up short, bubbles percolating from his throat and drowning out his yelp of shock.
It was Ron.
Well, Ron was one of what appeared to be four prisoners tied down here anyway, his round face looking more bloated than normal. Had he been drowned somehow, and the only thing Neville was meant to recover was a body? Flashing back to the night before in the library, with Moony, Neville felt his blood run cold, even as he swam furious strokes up to his best mate and searched him for any signs of injury, never mind life.
Ron's eyes were closed, so that it might appear as though he was sleeping, his body swaying along in the water like a cork. He would no doubt float like a cork too, were he not literally anchored to the bottom of the Black Lake.
Neville tried to calm his panicked mind by assuring himself: He's alive…. Ron's alive…. He wasn't sure how, or what magic would have been used to assure his safety. All he was sure about (though even this was weak) was that the Tournament organizers wouldn't actually traumatize their Champions by making them retrieve the lifeless form of their most precious thing in the world.
For of course the mermaids would take something of value from each of the Champions. Neville had just never expected for that object of value to be a person.
Turning briefly away from Ron to take in the line of abducted people, his heart once again leapt into his throat when he saw the sunlight from high above reach down this far to dance in the golden hair of….
"Luna!"
The lovely Ravenclaw appeared just as unconscious and out of it as Ron did, far from the at-ease girl he knew and had met in the greenhouses just last night. Thinking back to that moment, Neville seethed: Moody had walked in on that little pow-wow as well. Whatever had happened, Luna hadn't made it back into her bed last night, either.
It was small relief to discover that the remaining two stolen persons, both of them girls, were entirely unfamiliar, nor held any meaning, to him. One of them had exotic, cocoa-brown skin, and Neville vaguely recognized her in passing: she too was a Ravenclaw, if not in Luna's year, then perhaps in the year above. She played Seeker for the Ravenclaw Quidditch team…. Cho Chang! That was her name. The other girl was far younger, couldn't be older than a first year, if that. Her hair was a lighter, more strawberry blonde than Luna's and she appeared all too innocent, shackled down in leg irons and chained to this lakebed.
Neville's eyes swept up and down the line, pondering. Four prisoners…. Four champions. Borrowing a page from Hermione's book, he could deduce reasonably that each prisoner was meant for one of the Champions.
Here was the conundrum: just what was a Champion to do, whom was he supposed to rescue (if rescue rather than recover indeed was the aim), if he could lay a claim of value on more than one person?
Suddenly, a figure darted out of the seaweed grove to his left. Cedric Diggory now appeared, sporting Hufflepuff yellow swimming trunks. If he seemed perturbed like Neville about what he found, he didn't pause or hesitate, making right for the brown-skinned Cho Chang and letting loose a bright spark from his wand. Judging by the coloring of the spell alone, Neville guessed it might be Diffindo.
A very prominent bubble was completely and safely encasing Cedric's head, which now turned so he and Neville locked eyes. Cedric silently tapped a finger to his wristwatch as he tucked Cho in close next to him. Hurry up!
Neville nodded, and watched as his rival kicked for the surface. His eyes swiveled now between the three remaining captives. The pre-teen girl meant nothing to him, but she clearly meant something to somebody. He zeroed in on ping-ponging his eyes between Ron and Luna, torn. One of them was the person of value meant for him, he was sure of it. But which one?
Cho meant something to Cedric….. assuming Ron was the person who meant something to him, then that left Luna as the someone of value for one of the other two Champions: Fleur Delacour or Viktor Krum. Again, which Champion went with which prisoner? The thought that Luna might be an object of Krum's concern left Neville feeling strangely bothered.
He was wasting precious time bobbing here dilly-dallying. Unlike the other Champions, he might very well have to choose whom he rescued and hope he guessed right.
Except, as he now gazed upon Luna's unconscious body…. Why couldn't he rescue both? Why shouldn't he?
So thinking, Neville set to work untying Ron's bonds. He finally resorted to casting Diffindo, and like with Diggory, the chains broke. Trusting that Ron's natural instinct would be to float up, Neville turned back to break Luna's chains –
A blurry tornado of fins descended on him just then, as the mermaids appeared out of the seaweed and swarmed him, one of their leaders holding the prongs of a trident to his throat.
"But…. she's my friend too!" Neville protested, speaking clearly even through his gills.
The mermaid hissed. "Only one!"
Only one? The mermaids hadn't stopped him from freeing Ron, which told Neville that Ron was probably his prisoner to rescue. Yet he couldn't just leave Luna, not even for whomever she was meant for.
Just then, the mermaids scattered, as a figure with the head of a shark and the body of a man came charging with a bellow into their midst. Neville barely had time to dive out of the way himself, as the shark-man snapped the chains binding Luna in his powerful jaws and carried her off. Neville burned with a feeling he couldn't quite name. Krum….
That left the little girl as Fleur's object then. Neville glanced at his watch, found there was still some time left yet, and decided to wait and see to it that Fleur would appear. Then he would grab Ron and make a break for the surface and third place, at least.
Except after a time, Fleur didn't come. Neville checked his watch again anxiously: the hour was nearly up, and with it, so would be his ability to breathe.
Sod it.
Firing off Diffindo on the little girl's chains, Neville kicked off and grabbed Ron, then reversed course and sailed across the expanse above the lakebed, meeting the small girl's bobbing form as it rose to the surface. Somehow managing to keep a grip on both prisoners, Neville set his eyes heavenward and surged for the surface…..
The mermaids attacked again with no warning, leaving Neville no choice but to try and fend them off with both his wand and his bare hands, and all without bringing harm to either the girl or Ron. But the mermaids just kept coming; they seemed intent on drowning him, if the wearing off of the gillyweed didn't take him first.
Neville was left with no choice. He let go of both Ron and the girl, allowing the laws of physics and nature to take their course and propel both to the surface and safety without him.
Battling the mermaids, Neville sensed the moment when his gills started to fail him. With the last of his breath and strength, he ground out, "Ascendio!" and let magic propel him until he was breaking the waves, sailing through the air and landing hard on the deck.
Instantly, he felt a crowd swarm him. "Neville…. Neville!" The older voice sounded like Dumbledore's.
Then a mane of bushy brown curls was whacking him in the face as Hermione flung herself to her knees and threw her arms around his neck.
"Hermione! What…..?"
"You got third! Fleur never got past 'ze grindylows'!" Hermione put on an affected French accent, her voice bubbling, her eyes shining with relief.
He started to croak out something else, but he felt hands suddenly grip his skull as Hermione pressed a wild kiss into the crown of his head. Through the tangle of bodies converging on him, Neville could see Ron, Luna and the little pre-teen girl with towels about their shoulders, shivering and spluttering. Then another body was nearly bowling him over, and a rambling mixture of French and English was poured into his ear.
"You saved 'er! You saved 'er even zo she vas not yours to save!" Fleur was overcome with gratitude, and clearly moved by Neville's gallantry. She was practically weeping, and might have kissed Neville too, were it not for the cold glare Hermione was sporting.
Luna's expression was also, for once, oddly unreadable as she and Ron staggered up to join them. Spotting him, Fleur rose from her knees in a kind of daze, flitting over to the redhead. "And you…. you 'elped…."
Ron gaped like a fish, unable to string words together before Fleur had suddenly taken his face in her hands and was pressing a wet kiss on his cheek. Hermione now looked truly murderous, becoming only more enraged at how Ron was blushing bright red.
"Merci…." was all the youngest Weasley boy could gasp out.
Catching Luna's gaze, Neville was relieved to see her flash her lovely smile again. He vaguely wondered where her supposed knight, Viktor, had wandered off to, but frankly, he didn't care. He barely even acknowledged Dumbledore stating, on the grounds of displaying "moral fiber" in wanting to rescue all the hostages despite not returning to the surface within the hour, he, Neville, was being awarded second place.