Yo! Thank you to all readers so far!
Two weeks later, Hedwig arrived in the Great Hall during breakfast with a small parcel. Harry was filled with relief at the sight. The gillyweed was here, and now the twins could help him practice his swimming and he wouldn't have to worry about drowning during the task that was still just about five or so weeks away.
He had plenty of time to practice not just his swimming, but some spells as well. Hermione had insisted he work on a few in case they would be needed in the lake.
Swimming practice began two days later when Harry and the Weasley twins managed to sneak into the Prefect's bath late at night, long after curfew when all the patrols had ended for the night.
None of them were really in the mood for joking right now, mostly because they were tired, so they just filled the tub, stripped down to their swimming trunks, and got to work. While Harry did indeed know the basics, he was going to need more than that to complete the second task.
They met up like that again many nights, and while Harry was busy working on his swimming, Hermione was busy doing work of her own. Using Harry's invisibility cloak (Harry and the twins were using the Marauders' Map), Hermione snuck into the library every night to do some research.
She was incredibly curious about what the fake Moody had said to Harry. Not Alastor Moody, but also not the Bartemius Crouch they knew. It was such a strange statement that Hermione couldn't help but think about it, and she knew Harry felt the same way.
Already having a bit of a hunch, she started with some old school records, going back some thirty years or so first, and moving forward through time from there. It didn't take her long to have her hunch confirmed, but Hermione decided to do more thorough research before taking her findings to Harry because confirmation or not, this man's presence in the castle should have been an impossibility.
Yes, if she was right about this, there was no way he could be in the castle right now. There was no way he could be anywhere, for that matter. So how was this possible? And why was it happening at all?
Hermione grew more curious, but with that, she also began to grow frustrated. She already knew research wasn't going to answer any of these questions, and unfortunately, that only meant one thing.
"Oh no, Harry's going to do something stupidly dangerous again, isn't he...?"
Harry was not a happy camper when he woke on the morning of the second task. His stomach was in knots and he hated it, though he supposed the possibility of dying was something that did indeed tend to make most people a nervous wreck.
Harry knew he was prepared for the task though. Or at least, as prepared as he could possibly be. He had the gillyweed, and he'd practiced swimming both with and without it (he'd ordered extra for that purpose alone), and he knew at least some new spells that could probably help. There wasn't anything more he could do, he figured, but knowing that wasn't helping him feel any better.
And beyond all of that, beyond even the task, Harry also knew that Hermione was hiding something from him. He wasn't sure what it was, but he had a feeling she wasn't doing it to upset him.
Knowing Hermione, she was probably waiting for the task to be over so she could tell him without worrying about it distracting him from it. Thinking about that wasn't helping much either.
Harry sighed heavily as he pushed himself out of bed. "Well," he said in a mutter, "time to find out which precious thing has been stolen from me."
Unfortunately for, well, everyone, the second Harry found out what had been stolen from him, he broke out into a series of incomprehensible but very angry hisses that none of them understood in the slightest.
"Ron!? Are you fucking joking!? Ron!? Did you not notice that we haven't spoken in months!? You literally could have stuck Voldemort down there and it would have made more sense right now! Are you honestly that delusional!?"
"He looks mad," said Neville, watching Harry's verbal explosion with a frown from the stands.
"I think he took that rather well, actually," said Fred, sounding pleasantly surprised.
"Better than I thought he would, that's for sure," said George.
"...It's probably a good thing he doesn't know Hermione's down there too, isn't it?"
"Yep."
"A very good thing."
"He's going to be even more angry when he finds out though, won't he?"
"Oh yeah."
"I'm expecting another outburst."
"Don't worry, Neville. Just lean back and enjoy the fact that he's not yelling at any of us."
Not sure whether he wanted to laugh or groan, Neville settled for a strangled mix of both.
The second the cannon blast signalling the start of the task sounded, Harry watched as the other three competitors jumped into the water. He didn't do the same. Instead, he shoved some disgustingly slimy gillyweed into his mouth, chewed, forced himself to swallow, and waited for it to take effect, hearing but ignoring the amused jeers he was getting from many people in the audience.
Did they still honestly think he wasn't going to do anything at all just because he hadn't reacted instantly like the others? They'd done the same during the first task, hadn't they? Had they not learned from that? Well, clearly not, it seemed. What idiots.
When it started getting a little hard to breathe, Harry knew he'd waited long enough and he entered the lake as well, cursing immediately at the icy cold water. Why the hell was the lake task taking place in fucking February!? Whose shitty idea was that? Whoever had come up with this task had obviously never entered a lake in the middle of winter, that much was obvious.
What a heartless dunderhead.
Harry knew he had a full hour to complete the task, and he'd been intending on finishing it as quickly as possible. But now that he thought about it, was that really a good idea?
Knowing the logic of all the idiots, the faster he finished the task, the more they'd think he wanted to participate. After all, the faster they did, the better their scores would be, and hadn't he already decided he didn't give a damn about those? In that case, maybe it would be better to take his sweet time down here.
Harry didn't doubt Ron and the others would be safe-Dumbledore wouldn't allow anything bad to happen. Probably. Really, the only thing he had to worry about was the gillyweed. It would only last an hour, but if he found a suitable place, he'd be able to take some more. He did still have extra on hand, so long as it remained in his pocket.
Deciding to do just that, Harry took his time exploring the depths of the lake. It was pretty interesting, but that wasn't surprising. They only ever saw the lake's surface, and that got awfully boring after a while.
He'd never realized how deep the lake was. It was much deeper than it was wide, which was kind of cool. Speaking of, where the heck was the giant squid? Wasn't it down here somewhere too?
Nearly an hour of exploring later, Harry ended up finding a small pocket of air to stick his head into, and he waited a couple of minutes for the gillyweed to stop working. He'd been hesitant about surfacing for air because he didn't want the judges calling an end to the task just yet. It was better to keep them waiting, so he was glad he'd found this spot.
He shoved some more gillyweed into his mouth and as he waited for it to do its thing, he spotted a creeping tentacle. Ha, he'd known the squid would have to show itself eventually. It really was pretty massive though, Harry thought as he lowered his head back under the water a moment later. The tentacles were moving around rather comically too.
Wait. Harry looked closer and suddenly realized something. Was the squid trying to tell him to follow it? Well, he had another hour until the new gillyweed wore off, and he had no reason not to trust the squid, so he shrugged mentally and followed.
It didn't take Harry long to realize the giant squid was trying to show him around the lake. Maybe they were his favourite spots down here or something. It was hard to tell since he couldn't understand the squid. Not to mention he wasn't even sure whether the squid could talk in the first place. Still, it was pretty neat.
The entertaining tour came to an end some fifty minutes later though, when the giant squid directed Harry right to Ron, frightening off all of the grindylows with his menacing size, even though his personality actually seemed to be rather sweet. Those grindylows were terrible for judging the giant squid on his size alone. Big didn't always mean scary!
Ron was unconscious, floating in place due to the chain around one of his ankles. There were three more chains around him, but no one was attached to any of them. It seemed the other competitors had already come and gone ages ago. That was probably a good thing.
Harry turned to the squid and motioned to the chain, and the squid broke it without any effort at all. Harry then grabbed Ron by the arm and started swimming upwards, the squid helping him along, which was another thing that was probably good because he could feel the gillyweed's effects beginning to wear off.
When they were just below the surface, the giant squid stopped and Harry waved at him in thanks with his free hand before continuing, shoving Ron up through the water first before breaking the surface himself.
Taking a breath of fresh air, Harry started swimming back to shore, glancing back to make sure Ron was following. He was. The crowd looked bored as hell. Harry wasn't surprised. The adults looked pretty angry. Harry wasn't surprised about that either. Neither did he care.
Instead, once he was out of the water, Harry just started making his way back to the castle before anyone could say anything, and he was quickly joined by his friends. One of the twins cast a drying charm on him, and the other twin cast a warming charm. Harry thanked them both gratefully, but they had other things on their minds right now.
"What the hell were you doing down there for two full hours?" asked Fred.
"Exploring the lake. The giant squid's a pretty good tour guide."
Neville stumbled and choked at the same time. "You're going to give us all heart attacks one day, Harry."
Harry just grinned.
And that's it for now. I'm gonna be honest-if Harry were a few years older, that giant squid scene would have gone in a VERY different direction! I mean, come on, you've all seen enough hentai to know where THAT could have gone-consensually, of course. Consentacles for the win. Looking forward to reviews! Laterz!