In pain, in the dark and in perfect solitude once more he swam. He headed for the middle of the lake, the deepest, darkest part.
Near the bottom, the water was cool which eased the stinging in his many wounds. After several minutes, there came a dull ripple through the water that sounded distantly like a scream, but he pressed on.
Eventually, when he felt he might go mad from isolation in the dark, a shape only identifiable by its being darker than the gloom. As he approached, he made out a great towering thing like a tree of stone protruding up from the bottom of the lake.
More than a hundred feet tall, it rose almost to within reaching distance of the surface, but its roots were lost far below.
That's when he saw them. Merfolk.
There were dozens of the tall, lithe creatures surrounding the pillar and they had definitely spotted him. Several raised short, thick spears and gathered to face him from more than a hundred feet away.
In person, he found they had very little in common with either the illustrations in their textbooks – which suggested they were more fish-like, nor the animated film he had seen as a child which showed them all as idealised and beautiful people with handsome tails instead of legs. Indeed, the closer he came to the pillar, the stranger they looked.
In the group of more than a dozen he could see, there appeared to be at least three distinct… varieties? Species?
Three of them looked like enormous, strangely contorted sharks, with long, broad, almost expressionless faces and tiny dark eyes that glittered like gemstones. They wore something that looked close to togas of intricately woven seaweed studded with shells and gemstones, some of which glimmered with an unnatural light.
Most of the rest were much smaller, roughly the size of Harry himself. They looked more human, with long crests running back from high, peaked foreheads over huge, slitted eyes. They had diagonal slashes in their faces and large mouths with thin, expressive lips. They were lean and seemed to be naked, demonstrating elaborate patterns across their scaly bodies and long fingered, webbed hands.
But two were very different and they were the ones that came toward him. To Harry they looked completely sexless but were very distinct, looking almost like the people from the animated movie, with a human-like torso and shoulders with human-looking arms. Their chests tapered into thick tails double the length of the rest of them and ended in rigid fins. One of the pair was naked and up close, seemed to either have tattoos or complex scale patterns across all of its body and face while the other wore what looked like leather armour and carried a long, serrated bone sword in a pair of belts that crisscrossed its torso.
They appeared to come in peace as Harry stopped a few feet away at the same level as them. There they floated; their long faces inscrutable as he waited for some indication.
After almost a minute and starting to worry about how much time had passed, Harry took the initiative and made his best attempt at bowing before wincing as pain lanced through the wounds in his back.
The merfolk with the spear bowed in return and made an expression close to a smile while the other moved toward Harry, hands extended.
It said something that he couldn't make out as he had no more than a handful of words of Mermish.
He shook his head, "I don't know what you mean. My back hurts." He said, trying to hold back the pain from his face. He suddenly wondered how much blood he had lost.
The merfolk made a sad, conciliatory kind of expression and touched Harry's face with its long, cool fingers. It moved behind Harry with a flick of its fins and he felt those cold hands touch a few spots on his back and gently touch his lacerated neck.
In another burst of bubbling, elaborate speech, he thought he made out the words, 'bad', and 'grindylow', but couldn't make sense of it.
The merfolk came back to face him and smiled, holding out a hand and touching his head. He held out his own hand, shaking his head.
The merfolk frowned and drew a shape on his open palm then tapped his hand.
"I… I'm sorry," he said, feeling the effects of the strengthening solution run out of him as a wave of tiredness crept down his legs. He made himself straighten up, "I don't understand."
The merfolk nodded then drew a strange glowing shape in the air with one long, clawed finger, then touched Harry on the chest.
The shape was familiar, and Harry shoved his hand into the pocket of his trunks, pulling out the stone that had given him the vision, the lie.
The merfolk made a strange gesture with its hands and took the stone from him, turning it over and drawing another shape on its back before handing it back. The shape, another mermish glyph or rune, was engraved into the surface of the stone.
The other merfolk swam forward then, blowing a large bubble from one of its nostrils. Harry recoiled, unable to breathe air and unused to it after so long, but the bubble expanded just enough to cover his eyes and ears. The merfolk pushed its own head into the bubble and Harry saw that its eyes had rolled back into its head.
"He was taken because he is the one who, in your blackest night, will draw fire from stone and ignite the heavens."
The words weren't English – they couldn't be – because Harry couldn't remember them after the merfolk had finished speaking. The bubble burst, deluging water back into the empty space and the merfolk blinked.
It drew a semicircle over its head with one long arm, rotating the hand as it went then touched him on his temple.
"I don't understand, what was that?" Harry asked, his head aching.
The first merfolk smiled and wrapped its long hand around his and led him, swimming gracefully toward the pillar.
The water had warped his depth perception. It had looked large and close, but it was enormous, a tree in basalt whose roots must've reached into the underworld and its branches into worlds unknown.
Harry shook his head, trying to clear the exhaustion and let himself be drawn along and down by the merfolk.
They went deeper until the pressure increased to the point of discomfort even on Harry's magically adapted body. Into the crushing black they delved until the pillar, the two merfolk and the light from Harry's wand was the only thing left in the world.
Then there were shapes and something glimmering that reflected the light from his wand ahead.
Finally, he thought, starting to kick half-heartedly.
The shapes resolved into six figures, four were tied, bound to spiky outcroppings of the pillar with thick, woven cords: Ron, Hermione, Cho and a little girl who could only be Fleur's little sister. Cedric was there, using his wand, a serrated blade of ice running down its length to cut at the rope holding Cho. He looked up, the bubble around his head wobbling. There was another merfolk like the one that had engraved the stone floating a few feet behind him, a grim look on its face.
He looked terrible. He was covered almost all over in raw circular wounds that had torn his skin. One of his ears was tattered and he held his left arm curled tight against his body. He nodded to Harry and raised his wand to his head in a weak salute.
Coming level with him, Harry checked his bandoleer and took out his last coagulation and his only blood replenishing potion. He passed them to Cedric and mimed drinking.
Cedric took them looking confused.
Frustrated and achingly tired, Harry frowned. "Come on, you idiot, drink them so we can get out of here!"
Clearly unable to understand, Cedric shook his head and shrugged exaggeratedly before bringing both phials inside the bubble around his head and swallowing their contents one after the other.
It took a few seconds, but he relaxed and his skin flushed pink, his wounds stopping leaking red into the water.
Then a ripple ran through the water and the merfolk turned, eyes wide and the spear carrier, its face transfixed with sudden rage, darted up into the darkness.
Harry looked from his merfolk who shook its head then to Cedric who shrugged again before smiling and throwing a thumbs up and exaggeratedly mouthing 'thank you' before turning back to the pillar with his weirdly transfigured wand.
Harry, really paying attention to the hostages for the first time, swam over to his friends. All four appeared to be asleep and unaffected by the intense pressure. He tugged at the ropes binding Ron before realising he had no chance without something to cut through the thick cords. His mind was hot and slow like each thought had to come to him through honey.
Cedric finished cutting and putting his good arm around Cho as she fell into the water. He looked at Harry and gestured to his wand, showing the serrated blade of ice that turned it into something between a Bowie knife and machete.
"How do I do that?" Harry asked, pointing to his wand that seemed, at that point, a totally useless stick of wood.
Cedric dismissed the spell, the blade melting in a couple of seconds then repeated the effect, a new blade emerging from his wand before pointing at Harry like he was supposed to copy him somehow.
Harry shook his head. "I've never even heard of something like that!" he shouted.
Cedric looked from Harry to Cho then back to Harry and mouthed something obscene before releasing Cho and moving toward Ron.
Both of the merfolk moved quickly between Harry, Ron and Cedric, shaking their heads.
Cedric spoke a few words in what could only be mermish, the words sounding impossible to make with a human throat, but the two merfolk just shook their heads and remained between them.
Harry sighed and moved around them, putting a hand on Cedric's shoulder. There was no reason for them both to lose. He made a cutting motion across his throat then pointed to Cedric and Cho then up toward the distant surface.
Cedric tried to move toward the ropes again, refusing to give up, but was pushed back by the merfolk.
Harry put a hand on Cedric's chest and shook his head. "Come on, just go. They're not going to let you help me."
Cedric sagged and shook his head before nodding. He dismissed his ice blade again, put his good arm around Cho and did some kind of spell to launch the two of them up and out of sight followed by his merfolk.
Harry, frustrated at being unable to sigh through his gills, took a moment to get himself together. A moment of meditation gave him some peace and he increased the brightness from his wand, casting the focused beam across the lake floor in search of something sharp enough to use as a cutting tool.
There was nothing other than muddy silt.
Resigning his exhausted mind to hard labour, he briefly wondered what the other two champions were doing, before going to the rope binding Ron and starting to abrade it against the coarse stone of the pillar.
It was agonisingly slow work, but it had an effect, strands of whatever the rope was made of fraying as Harry sawed it against the stone.
Then there was a ripple in the water, a strange, rich smell-taste.
The merfolk beside him shrieked and backed away, grabbing the waistband of his shorts to pull him aside.
Three of the shark-like spear carrying merfolk and the one that had been with Harry crashed into the area alongside an enormous shark, jabbing at it with their spears.
The shark was thrashing wildly, its gleaming white and grey body covered with dozens of small wounds. It bit furiously at the merfolk who managed to dart aside from its mouthful of jagged teeth.
There was a curious marking on the head of the shark that made a connection in Harry's tired mind. I It looked like the shark had a severely peaked hairline.
Krum! He thought, the pieces slotting into place as the shark caught one of the spears in its mouth and snapped it.
It had to be Krum, somehow with some kind of immense human transfiguration in place. Harry raised his wand and, in its light he saw eyes that were somehow fundamentally belonged to the surly seeker.
"Krum, stop!" he tried to shout, not knowing whether Krum was even conscious, locked inside the body of that ancient monster.
The merfolk looked terrified – they were trying to fend the Krum-shark off, not dealing serious wounds, but while they were able to fend off its teeth, its razor sharp skin slashing deep wounds in their skin.
Somewhere between fear, exhaustion and frustration, Harry pushed away from his guardian merfolk and darted forward, slashing with his wand, he cast the only spell he could think would have a chance of affecting a shark twice the size of the man that it had been transfigured out of. He had only cast it twice before, both in recent months and never underwater, but the memory of Pansy using it on him made him understand it intimately.
"Anebriaté!" he shouted, jabbing the thrashing shark with his wand and pouring as much power as he could into it.
The tail of the shark came round and smashed into Harry's sternum, propelling him a dozen feet back into the water.
Harry screamed out with the agony in his middle. Looking down he saw that he was breathing again and every breath was a bright agony. Finding he still had his wand in his hand, he turned the right way up and saw that the shark had stopped fighting.
The silvery-grey shape was not quite still – it had to keep moving – but now the animal was gone from the eyes. Krum looked back at Harry.
"Fuck you!" Harry screamed and slashed out with his wand, shouting "diffindo."
A bloody slash appeared across the snout of the shark and it recoiled in pain.
A part of Harry that had sunk deep inside due to tiredness, pain and a feeling of injustice felt pity and guilt over the needlessly cruel action, but the part of him that was in pain at the moment could only feel the agony in his chest and hate and resentment that he had finally remembered a suitable charm to cut Ron free.
Harry raised his left hand with the middle finger extended to Krum and pointed his wand at the broken spear head on the lake floor, summoning it into his hand with a word and turning back to the pillar.
The merfolk were still on-edge, somewhere between cautious, furious and terrified of the potential of the Krum-shark, but they left both of the champions to their work.
Harry half-swam back to the pillar, the pain in his chest preventing him from kicking with both legs and used the razor-sharp stone spearhead to easily slice through the rope, unwilling to risk bottoming out his power in case some other horror came to him.
As Ron came free from the pillar, he saw Krum catch onto the idea. He took the part of the rope furthest from Hermione awkwardly in his teeth and jerked his enormous body, pulling the rope taut and snapping it.
As Hermione floated free, the Krum-shark turned to look dolefully at Harry before turning back and somehow gently taking Hermione's robes in his jaws and starting to swim to the surface.
Arsehole. Harry thought, putting his arms under Rons and starting to kick up, wondering if there was any way to beat Krum to the surface.
There was a sudden stabbing pain in his gills and he felt like he was half a breath short. Time's up, he thought and was about to kick upward before he noticed the little blonde girl still tied to the pillar.
Torn, he realised Fleur must not have made it somehow – no one was coming to save the girl.
There was no way he could leave her in the dark, alone except for the merfolk and the monsters they shared the lake with, he kicked forward dragging Ron's unconscious body with him and summoned the blade back to his hand.
The merfolk raised its hands and shook its head as another spike of pain went through Harry's throat. Time's definitely up, he thought, shaking his head at the merfolk and throwing the spearhead away. Deciding that it was now or never and that he had probably failed the task as the hour was probably already up, he pointed his wand at the rope and said, "diffindo."
The girl floated free as the merfolk cried out, waving its hands back and forth.
The sudden pain in his throat told him he had seconds left, the potions effects were about to end. "I have to get her out," he said to the merfolk, "help me or I die with them!"
The merfolk took the little girl by the arm and started swimming upward, faster than Harry could have when he had been at top strength.
His throat was agony, the skin of his neck burning and the water suddenly freezing cold and crushing him. He swam as best he could, rising quickly but slowing as he felt his feet shrinking.
He closed his eyes as the pressure eased, sucking in every particle of oxygen he could through his vanishing gills.
Stars started to burst behind his eyes as the darkness seemed to lessen, but he couldn't be sure. It was taking all his strength to hold onto Ron and keep kicking. The desperate urge to breathe, the instinctive, bone-deep need for air started to overwhelm him as the pain vanished from his throat.
No. More. He thought, clenching his mouth closed against the desperate need for air. It would be easier if I did just breathe in, went to sleep. Said a voice in his head. It was a distant, sad voice that just wanted to rest.
Think about it – no more tasks, no more Vodemort, no more scar and suffering. The voice was cool and peaceful.
Then he saw Pansy's face, clear as if she were standing next to him. She was crying and he was causing it.
She'll get over it. In time. She'll find someone else to love. What're you after all other than an orphan who is always causing trouble?
Bubbles – his last breath trickled up from his nose and rose into the light.
Light? Kick toward the light. Win! Win! That was a different voice, a darker voice like the one that had driven him to fight off Moody's imperius curse.
He bit his tongue, focusing on that additional pain to keep his mouth closed, to keep his lungs from sucking in water and kicked.
There was a dark halo around his vision and he couldn't do it anymore. Then something cold, but warmer than the water touched his bare, exhausted legs and his face broke the surface of the water.
And he breathed in.