Dark

Chapter 24

Eleanor
If I was certain of anything when I woke up on the morning of the second task, it was that I felt much more confident than I had before the first task. I had spent the past five weeks practicing the Bubble-Head Charm. For the first week after Malfoy had given me the spell I needed, I practiced late at night in the common room. I wanted to perfect it before I attempted using the spell in the lake. Once I had a solid grasp on it though, I used it for all of my training sessions with Viktor. He had figured out his method of breathing under water much sooner than I had. I was now used to seeing him transfigure himself into one thing or another, each animal he tried out being able to breathe under water.
Though we had been in the lake and were growing used to it, we never ventured too terrible deep. It was one thing to know we had to do so during the second task when there would be professors and mediwitches ready to help us if we ran into trouble. To attempt going too far down with no back up awaiting us on the bank of the lake though, would be entirely too dangerous.
The champions were all given outfits to wear for the task today, so I slipped into my swimming attire. It was a simple tank top in Slytherin green, with my surname plastered across the back, and paired with black shorts. Simple and not something that would get tangled up in the water during the task. Before leaving my dorm I grabbed a small pull-string bag from my nightstand.
During the week I had spent perfecting the Bubble-Head Charm, I had also managed to stumble across a back-up plan. Thankfully I wasn’t going to need it now that I was confident my Bubble-Head Charm would last the full hour underwater. I knew for a fact, though, that Harry had been struggling to find a way to breathe underwater. So against my better judgment I still broke into Snape’s store cupboard and took what he would need.
By the time I had reached the Great Hall I was fully annoyed by the looks I had received as I passed other students. Whether they were wondering why I was dressed this way or if they were trying to figure out what it meant for the task ahead, I wasn’t sure. But I glared at each person who stared too long as I made my way to an empty seat at the Slytherin table.
“Eleanor!” Astoria called out from a ways down the table. “Good luck today!”
I nodded in Astoria’s direction, still unsure why she found me interesting.
“Ready for the task?” A closer voice asked and I looked up to find Blaise Zabini watching me from across the table.
“Yeah.” I answered simply as I reached over the table for a nearby apple.
“What’s with the bag?” Zabini asked.
“I assume Harry hasn’t figured everything out yet, so it’s for him.”
As if on cue, someone was tapping my shoulder and I turned to find Harry standing behind me.
“Have you seen Hermione or Ron?” he asked me.
I noticed that he looked as if he had just woken up. While I felt confident in my ability to complete today’s task, I felt dreadful over the fact that I had to do it with Harry by my side.
“Of course I haven’t seen them, Harry.” I answered. “They’re you’re friends, you should keep track of them.”
Harry clearly wasn’t in the mood for my remarks. He rolled his eyes in annoyance before turning to leave. But I stopped him in his tracks with one question.
“Did you figure out how you’re going to breathe then?” I asked him.
Harry turned around, his eyes wide and his mouth hanging open. I knew he wouldn’t have figured it out. I picked up the small bag from the table and shoved it into Harry’s hands.
“Here. Instructions are in the bag.” I told him.
My annoyance was bubbling over at this point and I decided it would be better to simply head down to the lake than remain in the Great Hall.

Harry
I was standing at the bank of the Black Lake with the other champions. Next to me, Eleanor was stretching out her arms and making a point to ignore me. In all honesty, I didn’t want much to do with her either. She had no faith in me at all, she had expected me to fail to discover what I needed for today’s task. She’s known what we needed to do for weeks, probably knew exactly how she was going to breathe for an hour underwater for just as much time. Yet she still didn’t tell me anything about the task. I spent the entirety of the previous night trying to find a way to breathe under water when Eleanor had an answer for me all along.
In addition to this, Ron and Hermione were nowhere to be found. I hadn’t seen them since Fred and George had told them last night that Professor McGonagall was looking for them. I had expected them to return to the library and help me, but they never did. They never returned to the common room either.
Much to my displeasure, Ludo Bagman raised his wand to his throat. With a quiet utterance of the Sonorus charm his voice began to boom out over the crowd of students assembled in stands that had been erected around the bank of the lake.
“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. On the count of three, then. One…two…three!”
The whistle echoed shrilly through the cold, still air. Without hesitation the other champions waved their wands and dashed toward the steely water.
As I had walked down to the lake from the Great Hall just minutes earlier, I had opened the bag that Eleanor had given me. It contained what the note inside said was Gillyweed, and I had to swallow it to breathe underwater. So I thrust the slimy wormlike bundle into my mouth and quickly waded into the edge of the water.
The water rose higher the farther I walked into the lake and before long I was swimming full out, no more slippery silt and sand under my feet. Just as I had become certain that Eleanor’s plan had back-fired, I felt a suddenly prickling sensation at the sides of my neck. I suddenly couldn’t take in any air and the suffocating feeling began to overwhelm me. Then I felt a rough tug on my leg and was pulled under the surface of the water.
As the freezing water rushed over my head I felt a sudden relief. The suffocating feeling disappeared and the coldness of the water seemed to melt away. Looking around for what could have dragged me under, I was surprised for a moment to see Eleanor before me. A large bubble had encased her nose and mouth and she seemed to breathing like normal. As her black hair billowed out in the water, she pointed a finger down. In a split second she was speeding off downward. I followed at her heels, finding that my hands and feet were now webbed and more fin like than before which made it easy to push forward through the water.
Small fish flickered past us like silver darts. Once or twice I thought I had seen something larger moving ahead, but each time we got nearer it turned out to be nothing but a blackened log or a dense clump of weed. There was no sign of any of the other champions, Eleanor and I were alone.
Light green weed stretched ahead as far as I could see, two feet deep, like a meadow of very overgrown grass. As I stared ahead, trying to make out the shapes before Eleanor and I, something took hold of my ankle.
I twisted around and saw a grindylow, a small and horned water demon, poking out of the weed. Its long fingers were clutched tightly around my leg, its pointed fangs were bared. I pulled out my wand and tried to say, “Relashio!” Rather than sound, a series of bubbles escaped my mouth. The spell worked all the same though. Instead of sending sparks at the grindylow, my wand pelted what seemed to be a jet of boiling water.
The grindylow’s hold on my ankle slackened and I pulled away. At the same moment Eleanor appeared at my side again and gave the creature a quick kick to the head. With that it retreated back into the weeds and Eleanor and I sped off once again.
We swam on for what felt like at least twenty minutes. We passed over vast expanses of black mud which swirled murkily as our movements disturbed the water. Then at long last I could just begin to make out an eerie sound up ahead.
“An hour long you’ll have to look,
And to recover what we took…”
Eleanor’s head perked up and I could tell that she had heard it too. We continued on, drawing closer to the sound. Suddenly there were large rocks ahead of us, decorated in strange paintings of what appeared to be merepeople.
“…your time’s half gone, so tarry not
Lest what you seeks stays here to rot…”
A cluster of crude stone dwellings stained with algae came into view up ahead. Here and there in the dark windows I could see faces. It was the merepeople, with their grayish skin and long, wild, dark green hair.
I continued to follow Eleanor along and eventually we came upon an entire crowd of merepeople. Their chorus was growing louder the closer we approached. Making our way over the gathered crowd I could make out a crude sort of statue; a gigantic merperson hewn from a boulder. Four people were bound tightly to the tail of the stone mereperson.
Ron was tied between Hermione and Cho Chang. There was also a girl who looked no older than eight, whose clouds of silvery hair made me sure that she was Fleur Delacour’s sister. All four of them 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.
How could they have taken people? I assumed they would take something we all valued, but to take a person from each of us? That didn’t seem right. Then again, they didn’t take someone from each of us, did they? Ron was my best friend, so he must have been my hostage to retrieve. Hermione was my friend too but she was probably here for Krum, just as Cho was here for Cedric. The young girl had to be Fleur’s hostage. So why wasn’t there anyone down here for Eleanor to retrieve?
Eleanor swam up to Ron and began attempting to undo the rope that tethered him to the statue. Meanwhile I was looking around, trying to see if any of the other champions were nearby. Surely we couldn’t be the only ones to have found what had been taken from us.
To my relief it was only a short moment before Cedric came pelting along through the water. He approached Cho as he looked between me and Eleanor.
“Got lost!” he mouthed, looking panic-stricken. “Fleur and Krum’re coming now.”
“Good,” Eleanor mouthed as she swam back over toward us. “Harry, let’s go.”
I shook my head at her. I couldn’t just leave the others down here. What if Fleur and Krum didn’t make it in time, what would happen to them?
Eleanor gave me an annoyed expression before turning back toward to Ron. Cedric was already speeding away to the safety of the lake’s surface. Eleanor abandoned her attempted to simply untie Ron and used her wand to blast apart the rope that bound him to the statue.
“Come on!” she mouthed fiercely at me, but I wouldn’t move. I wasn’t going to leave Hermione down here, and not that young girl either.
As Eleanor glared at me I continued to search the surrounding waters for any sign of Krum or Fleur. As I turned to look behind me I was met with the head of a shark making straight toward us. I moved out of the way just in time as it sped up to Hermione’s unconscious body and snapped at her binds. That was when I realized that the shark was only half of a shark. Krum must have tried to transfigure himself but didn’t get it quite right.
Eleanor released Ron who floated a few inches above the statue. I made my way to help Eleanor pull Krum back before he accidently took a bite out of Hermione’s leg. As Krum realized that we were trying to help he moved back and Eleanor used her wand to cut apart Hermione’s binds as well.
Krum grabbed Hermione and swam toward the surface, just as Cedric had. Again, Eleanor took hold of one of Ron’s arms and raised her eyebrows at me, questioning if I was coming or not. I shook my head at her. I couldn’t leave this girl down here. I may not know her, but I knew then that I couldn’t leave her down here. Fleur should have been here by now, what if something happened to her?
That was when I decided it didn’t matter anymore, we’d been down here for a long time and I couldn’t leave that girl down here. Her skin looked deadly pale already, how would it look by the time we made it to the surface and were able to get someone else to come down here after her. I pulled out my own wand and repeated what Eleanor had done with Ron and Hermione’s ropes. I pushed the girl through the water toward Eleanor and traded her for Ron.
As we made our way toward the surface I realized that my time with the Gillyweed must be running out. There were sharp pains at the side of my neck and I was beginning to slow down. Ron’s weight was becoming too much and as I looked down for a brief second I realized that my hands and feet were no longer webbed. A greater pain shot through my neck and suddenly I wasn’t breathing easily in the water anymore, I was inhaling large amounts of water into my lungs. I kept trying to push harder and harder against the water. Eleanor was soon out of sight as I was slowed down.
I struggled against the pain in my lungs and kept pushing with all the energy I had left. Just as my field of vision was beginning to grow dark I made out Eleanor again, still clutching Fleur’s sister close to her. She ripped Ron out of my grasp and gave him and the girl a great shove toward the surface. We must have been close then. Eleanor wrapped her arm around of my own and together we pushed harder toward the sun that was now visible through the water’s surface.
With a great rush of coldness we broke through and I inhaled sharply while at the same time water was trying to push itself out of my lungs. I could feel Eleanor helping to guide me toward the bank of the lake and I let her.

Eleanor
My arm was wrapped around Harry’s who was spluttering painfully next me. He had taken too much time down there. Gillyweed wasn’t meant to last that long and he pushed his luck. If we hadn’t been that close to the surface, I don’t know what would have happened.
Suddenly I could feel the sand and silt slipping between my toes. Finding my footing I kept dragging Harry toward the shore. Eventually he got his feet under himself and I released his arm. Once the slippery stones were no longer under my feet and the cold water was no longer lapping at my legs, I collapsed to ground. Pulling out my wand I undid the Bubble-Head Charm.
There was a roar of applause surrounding us, but I couldn’t care less about it. Catching my breath I pushed myself back to my feet and stood clumsily.
“What the hell were you thinking?!” I shouted at Harry, who was still on his hands and knees trying to catch his breath and coughing up lake water. “How could you be so stupid?! We could have died down there. You could have died down there!” I was beyond livid at this point. His actions had been so dangerous. If we hadn’t been that close to the surface when the Gillyweed had worn off, there would have been no way for me to get him out of that lake alive. “Do you really think Dumbledore would have let something happen to anyone of them if someone didn’t turn up to fetch them? For goodness sake, Harry, use your brain!”
“He does have a sort of ‘saving people thing’,” Ron said awkwardly from nearby.
In my rage I hadn’t thought to look for Ron and that little girl. I was thankful in that moment to realize that they were both on the edge of lake with us. Ron was wrapped under a large blanket and sitting next to Hermione and Harry. Meanwhile the girl was clutched tightly in Fleur’s arms who was whispering rapidly to her in French.
As Krum tried to pull Hermione’s attention away from Harry and Ron, I stepped away from everyone else and laid back down on the ground. Madame Pomfrey soon descended upon me with a large blanket of my own and a vile of what looked like a Pepper-Up Potion. I drank it gratefully and let the warmth of the potion wash over me as if it were in my very blood. By the time I looked up again Dumbledore was crouched down at the edge of the lake talking in hurried Mermish with a group of merepeople. Then he moved away toward the other judges who seemed to be having a heated discussion.
Fleur was fawning over Ron and Harry for a moment before she turned her attention towards me. Before I could move away from her gesture, Fleur had wrapped me into a tight hug. I wasn’t sure how to respond to such an unexpected move, so I simply patted her softly a couple of times on the back. When she moved away from me she was beaming widely, her eyes a little red and watery.
“You ‘elped save ‘er!” She enthused.
“Er…sure.” I answered awkwardly. Fleur leaned in and kissed me once on each cheek before she fluttered away toward her sister again.
“Ladies and gentlemen, we have reached our decision.” A loud voice echoed through the air. I turned to see that Bagman was once again speaking to the crowd of students and teachers gathered in the stands. “Merchieftainess Murcus has told us exactly what happened at the bottom of the lake, and we have therefore decided to award marks out of fifty for each of the champions, as follows…
“Fleur Delacour, though she demonstrated excellent use of the Bubble-Head Charm, was attacked by grindylows as she approached her goal, and failed to retrieve her hostage. We award her twenty-five points. Cedric Diggory, who also used the Bubble-Head Charm, was first to return with his hostage, though he returned out minute outside the time limit of an hour.” There were enormous cheers from a section of the crowd, all donning the Hufflepuff colors. “We therefore award him forty-seven points.
“Viktor Krum used an incomplete form of Transfiguration, which was nevertheless effective, and was second to return with his hostage. We award him forty points. Harry Potter used Gillyweed to great effect and Eleanor Potter also used a successful Bubble-Head Charm. They returned last, and well outside the time limit of an hour. However, the Merchieftainess informs us that they were first to reach the hostages, and that the delay in their return was due to a determination to return all the hostages to safety. Not merely their own.”
I saw Ron and Hermione giving Harry half-exasperated, half-commiserating looks.
“Most of the judges,” Bagman gave Karkaroff a very nasty look, “feel that this shows moral fiber and merits full marks. However…the Potters’ score is forty-five points.”
I ran a hand through my hair, tuning out the noise as people in the crowd cheered and made their way from the stands. With the competition seeming more insane by the second, I ignored the rest of the champions and made my solitary way back toward the castle.

Draco
As I pushed through the crowd of students headed back toward the castle I finally caught sight of Eleanor, the name Potter emblazoned across the back of her shirt. The idea of Slytherin gaining some worthwhile respect was becoming more and more of a possibility. Eleanor and Potter were now tied with Diggory for first place. As much I didn’t want Potter win, I couldn’t deny that the idea of a Slytherin winning the tournament was particularly appealing.
I finally made my way to Eleanor’s side and noticed the deep scowl plastered on her face.
“You’re tied for first, you could actually win this thing, you know.” I told her.
Eleanor was about to say something back but then another voice rang out from just behind us. Can’t Potter ever just mind his own business?
“Why wasn’t there anyone down there for you? Everyone had a hostage but you.” Potter asked as he reached forward and gripped Eleanor’s wrist, bringing her to a stop among the mass of people now heading up the stone steps to the Entrance Hall. As much as Potter annoyed me, I couldn’t help but think that I had been wondering the same thing. Each champion had someone taken that was important to them, and yet only four hostages were returned to the shore. If Harry was telling the truth, then no one had been down there for Eleanor in the first place. Why would they only take one hostage for both Potters?
As the thought raced through my mind I watched Eleanor turn to face Harry. I had expected her to either be indifferent to his question, or furious. Those seemed to be Eleanor’s only reactions to anything. When I looked at her now though, that wasn’t what I saw at all. She looked truly upset in that moment, her expression strained.
“Who exactly do you think could have been down there for me, Harry?!” Eleanor began, raising her voice with nearly every word. “You’re my only family and you hate me! I don’t have any real friends! So who, Harry?! Who?!”
Potter looked as dumbfounded as I felt in that moment, and even Weasley and Granger looked lost for words from where they were standing next to Potter. Eleanor waited for a moment before she seemed to decide that Harry wasn’t going to say anything else. She turned sharply on her heel and stormed back into the castle.
“Can’t you just keep your mouth shut for once, Potter?” I hissed at him before making my own way into the Entrance Hall.